Tag Archives: summer

A Perfect August Night In OV

13 Saturday Aug 2022

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Finally. FINALLY. The heat and humidity broke. It coincided with a Friday night and everyone who came out celebrated it. There’s a pavilion across from the small strip mall where people park in the summer when the events are held and there’s no place for the rest of us to park when we need groceries… And you know what? That’s ok. Tonight a lady was teaching a group to salsa dance. An Icee truck was in the parking lot. It was AMAZING and it was a perfect night. I was not there to partake of the event, I just parked in the back so I could get in the store to buy some really dumb groceries. It reminded me of some times I was outside when I was little in the city… loud sounds, music, different sounds and vibes, but not something I was part of but was so curious about.

Speakinowhich, I pulled in and saw a stranger helping a stranger jumpstart his car. Everyone in the lot was behaving. The security guard came out and he was like, “Oh! This is fantastic weather!” He and his co-worker enjoyed the 70-degree, lessened humidity beautiful weather. I went to the store because I was craving hot dogs and Sabrett’s sauce. What I fool I was to believe. Came across the label of an unknown jar called Chow Chow. I’m a northerner and I don’t know what this stuff is. They tell me that it can be used on hot dogs and hamburgers and all kinds of other stuff, but Chow Chow??? I dunno. I decided to take a chance and will let you know tomorrow how it goes.

I loaded two bags into my battled-scarred car and drove back home. Oh? You don’t know about my battle-scarred car? The one with the paint wrecked, pooped on, nectared on, sand blasted, where the car wash can’t even help? And me with a bum shoulder that can’t detail her properly?

Everything is sus to me, but tonight my sus is lessened because I saw a guy helping a stranger jumpstart his car. A person suggested Chow Chow. A parking lot overflowed for salsa dancing in August, so unlike the covid years. It’s cooling off. I’m feeling something. And I just wanted to tell you that it feels good.

August, Just In Time.

23 Sunday Aug 2020

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Late summer nights in Jersey the council of women would convene beneath the maple tree. Dinner dishes dried and put away, beach chairs snapped open, metal frames scraped to find level ground to sit upon, and after a while they did rest their bones. It was time for us kids to make ourselves scarce, the women were gonna talk. It was lightning bug time, so wandering off wasn’t so bad. And yet…

The women smoked, their cigarettes cherry red targets in the fallen night. When I crept closer to eavesdrop on mom and her sisters and maybe a cousin or two, because nothing could be cooler than whatever it was they were talking about, the chatter stopped. They swished ice in their tea glasses and waited for my boredom to lead me elsewhere or shooed me away, nothing here to see, ma’am, move along. There were no men here at the council, just me snooping and hanging out with my little brother. One woman’s voice frequently rose above the others, edgy, aggressive, often brought the laughter. I wondered who was wearing the admonishment tonight.
***
I padded down to the pagodas half hour before a cloudy sunset. No breathtaking palette here this time. The neighbors were chatting, seated level in their sandy beach chairs. A stray cicada came to inspect us, clearly wanting to bump into us but settled on singing its chainsaw song beneath the pagoda then flew away. One of us smoked. Two of us drank. I didn’t add much because I was feeling like a kid on a late summer night who should probably be off catching lightning bugs. It rained on us some though the sky was patchy, the water was surprising. None of us moved. I speak for the council when I say the little water was welcome.

Tick-Tock-Clock

03 Sunday Dec 2017

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It was a little home on two floors that smelled of roast beef and carrots and tea brewing in a saucepan, with the faintest whiff of motor oil wafting up from grandpa’s boots at the bottom of the stairs.

I was greeted by a faux-angry dachshund who I wanted to believe loved me and no one else. I got to walk him and sleep with him in the hammock and felt sad that my mother refused to trust or love him.

Spending a week with Mom Mom and Pop Pop alone was a different world than when everyone else was around. I got to choose where I wanted to sleep instead of having to be thrown into the hospital bed in the attic away from all the action, where the grownups were hanging out.  I slept on the couch in my clothes beneath scratchy knitted blankets in black and pink and orange and white. I could hear their enormous pink and white Big Ben ticking all night. If everything was quiet, you could it hear it from any room in the house.  I knew then why people suggest putting tick-tock clocks in with puppies to help them sleep at night.

No alarm clock woke me on those summer mornings. I think it was the sound of her slippered feet scuffing into the kitchen to get breakfast ready for her man, the sound of his razor, the scent of aftershave that woke me.  I’ve been longing for an enormous pink and white tick-tock clock to help me sleep at night. But maybe what I really need is just to write about those nights instead.

Cicada, For The Record

04 Monday Sep 2017

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Cicada serenade crickets high above wet dawning grass

Morning plant watering, windows open,  twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are as your magical vibrations call to the other

Buzzsaw driven by season, scaring northerners who never heardasuchathing.

Cicada crashed into me last morning two feet from my door, then crashed into another door then flew away muttering cicada curses having lost foothold on branch and song, weakening in season and song.

I open my door again, barefeet cold, morning no-wind. I see your black, bug-eyed body prone on the gray balcony, and I wonder if you are alive. Something tells me you are alive.

I remember baby food jars that held your carmel shells, the scent of your moultings strong in my nose, magicked by the Lampyridae flittering away in Aunt Betty’s yard, two and four horsepower–

three sisters sitting in broken-webbed lounge chairs talking women things, shooing us away, cigarette tips glowing in the dark–

Black cicada mumbled on my gray balcony. He crept his way towards the edge and fell down to the grass below, silent, Juliet unknown.