The cicadas’ song outside is louder than I remember and I’m wondering now if they’re not singing for mates, but that this is a warning – not even a lament – an electric, vibrating, siren call that it’s closing time. Summer’s ending.
The last days bring with them an urgency that I don’t feel in June and July, and I blame the cicadas. In June and July, they’re still wiggling themselves out of the ground, or they’re having too much fun flying – their iridescent wings swooping around the world like a moonbeam. Come August though, the darn things think life isn’t complete without someone to share it with and so bring on the leg twitching! Settle into a tree branch, and let’s get this party started, boys! Titch, titch, titch, titchtitchtitch…..
I swear the creatures make the sun set sooner.
Nevertheless, I fight what’s ending via denial. Such was the case when I went to the library last week about 48 hours before I was to report back to work. I grabbed about seven books, all YA, off the shelves. A Rainbow Rowell book, a book about a girl with a long list of fears, and a boy who at first robs her, but then helps her face each fear (I currently cannot put this book down), a series about a swanky Gossip Girl-like gal who goes on an adventure to save basically all of civilization with a gorgeous mummy that wakes up every 1,000 years. (I returned this series because I kept getting the mummy mixed up with Edward Cullen and also I started having nightmares about mummies and vampires and PROM, and nobody needs that kind of stress.)
I walked out of the library triumphant and truly believing that there was plenty of time to read all these stories before I had to go to work.
Now though, Hadley’s taking her first steps around middle school. (Dear Lord, please let those first steps be filled with delight and surprise as they were when she took her first FIRST steps – the ones in the living room of our third floor condo, the ones where she squealed the best squeal a fourteen month old has ever squealed, raised her hands in the air, and bolted from the coffee table to the couch. Well, you know, Lord. You were there. Let all her steps no matter how heavy, how urgent, how confusing, also be filled with joy and wonder.) Harper’s beginning 4th grade, which means she is no longer a “primary education” student (but she believes in so much magic still, please let it stay this way), and I am, well, I guess I’m giving away stories as best I can. I’m sharing as many as I can this year, and in doing so, I think I share part of myself, too.
I can’t stop that song, just like the cicadas can’t stop theirs. Life is just better when there are others to share our stories with.
{Harper}: This was the summer of Percy Jackson. Around July, he swam into her life. (Get it? Water? Poseidon? God of the water? IS THIS THING ON?) Before PJ, Harper read: Still A Work in Progress, Camp Dork, The Popularity Papers, Armstrong and Charlie, and Brown Girl Dreaming.
{Hadley}: Both girls entered the library’s summer reading challenge, but Hadley comes at these things differently than Harper. While Harper makes sure she picks a story she enjoys, Hadley’s strategy is to GET IT DONE. This is not to say Hadley doesn’t like to read, but this is business, not pleasure. Hadley (think she’s) on the clock. When she finished the challenge, she marched into the library with her filled in card, the librarian rolled out the cart of brand new award winning books to choose from, and seeing Hadley slow down and step carefully towards the stories, I understood the difference for her. This was the main course, her favorite, most delicious meal. This is what would keep her at the table. That challenge was just happy hour.
Hadley chose The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, and this story happened to Hadley. It crawled into her lap, snuggled up, and imprinted the heck out of her. After that, Hadley’s read everything of Van Draanen’s she can get her hands on. Flipped (which she already read), and all the Sammy Keyes books. Hadley began with the last one, which is sort of like starting with the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Hadley’s got her way of doing things, and so far, it works out just fine.
{Me}: I began the summer sitting on my front step drinking my coffee and finishing up Frank Morelli’s No More Sad Songs. Here’s a some kind of wonderful book. I mean to allude to the movie (I kept thinking of it as I read), but I also mean that the book is full of wonder: I wonder what happens when a boy loses his parents. I wonder what happens when the boy must take care of his grandfather, who has Alzheimer’s. I wonder what happens when an at first assumingly good-for-nothing uncle gets involved in the situation. I loved the book. My favorite parts of the story are the essays the main character writes for his high school English class. Go figure.
The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. I’m not sure where the idea that families have to be perfect embedded itself into my mind, but I am always hopefully captivated by a story with imperfect people who figure a thing or two out, while still remaining a part of that family. I suppose not everyone in this book chooses to stay, but they’re a part of the family nonetheless, and I like that. I also love the way Sweeney writes humor. I like to call it observational humor, and maybe that’s already a literary term that someone with a PhD in the Harvard English department wrote her thesis on. Good for her. Anyway, I liked when Sweeney describes the setting and what her characters are doing in the setting but never writes, “You guys. This. Is. So. Funny.” There are things that happen within the setting that are hilarious (the first sentence in the book is a great example).
The Cost of All Things by Maggie Lehrman. I read this book fast, and I love when that happens. It’s a book about magic, and teenagers, and at its heart, I think it’s a book about the reality that there is no spell or curse that helps us grow up except choosing to keep walking through it together – choosing to keep walking in the story and believing the story we have is wonderful is the magic we all need to cast.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. I’ll read anything Woodson writes. She is one of my favorite authors. This is a book of poems about Woodson growing up and becoming a writer. Words found her, and she found words, and thank goodness.
{Summer Read Alouds}: Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage (a mystery, a hurricane, a subtle budding friendship), and It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas (think, “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding” with a bit more drama to it – it’s set during 1979 Iranian Hostage crisis, and the main characters are from Iran living in America. Hadley and Harper loved it.)
In the garbage next to my desk is an empty bottle of sunblock. I baked banana bread with cloves and nutmeg and cinnamon in it this morning. The cicadas won’t stop singing. I suppose it is time for all of us to step forward into whatever it is we will do next. May there be lots of stories to come along with us.
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