The End of August

Hey, I am always punch drunk at the end of August, like frigging out of my mind. There are several reasons for this, the first being I just went through summer in Mississippi, with the A/C no lower than 79 Degrees, and I've been working day and night to keep my perennials alive, along with all the soon to die annuals that I planted for color. But that's not the only reason, I start working on August 1 each year, because school starts August 4 in these parts. It's insane. A ritual. I don't even have to. When I was a young girl, we didn't start to school until after Labor Day. And even if the schools started early, my mother was still vacationing somewhere, with all her children in tow, including me, so I ended up starting school late. Speaking of Mother, she died on a hot August day, which was sure as hell inconvenient for me, in fact this date, the 27th, in 2009, just several weeks shy of her 90th birthday. The week prior, she had been in the emergency room, counting on her fingers, trying to explain to the doctor that she really wanted to make 90 and could he help her do that. He said he would try and we were all just standing there, me, my sister, my son, my daughter-in-law, smiling, because that was so mother. She was sure as hell going out fighting and believe me she did. I never like to think of that day, really, but it was August and well, I never forget any August, and I am just about out of my head thinking of what I need to do before the month ends, because August always means I have stuff to do, like when I was young and a bit more sane, I had to go with Mother and the kids to buy school clothes, and shoes, you don't want to hear that story since they all wore some crazy width that meant driving to the most expensive shoe store in town, then we usually hit J.C. Penneys or similar to buy jeans and shirts. It was another ritual. Hours and hours of  the kids trying on shoes and jeans until I wanted to pull my hair out. When I was writing romance full time one summer, a guy called me up and said I had missed a speaking engagement for some writer's group in Memphis and wanted to know what happened. I thought he must be crazier than me. I said "no I had not" because I never commit to anything in August and I knew that like I knew I was breathing. I don't. Because I was probably baking or cleaning house or saving plants or buying shoes and jeans for the boys, all with my mother in tow. Mother was the Master Gardener, that woman that everyone called to come pinch their petunias and look at their roses. I haven't pinched a petunia right since she left this place. I miss my mother. She was the better reader, the better cook, the better gardener, the better traveller, the better storyteller. She was fierce. I cried the day she died, but I didn't cry a single drop the day we buried her. She had experienced an incredible but very hard life and she was just worn out. Instead, I read a poem written by Emily Dickinson and smiled. I always smile when I think of my mother, even in August.