I have no camp trunk to unpack, no school year to
anticipate. But evening breezes and dimming daylight carry signals as
unmistakable as they were in Upper Manhattan and the Catskills.
It’s late August and a new year is about to
begin.
We’ll still call it 2005 for another four
months or so, and even the Hebrew year 5766 won’t arrive until Oct. 4. But
flipping the wall calendar to September will feel like starting a fresh year,
just as it did when turning that page was like turning a corner between camp
and city.
A time to gain, a time to lose . . .
Even if you don’t live by an academic calendar, the
transition we cross during late summer brings a change of wardrobe, of
activities, of pace – grown-up versions of trading swimsuits , baseball gloves
and group bunks for composition books, laced shoes and family meals.
The end of summer now means a new year for
orchestras, stage theaters, recreation leagues, community classes, volunteer
committees and TV networks. Our neighborhood association has an annual block
party in a few weeks. Book group members are back in town, ready to
reconvene. Workplaces sharpen the focus as fiscal years wrap up and vacation
schedules have blank spaces again.
Oh sure, there’s still time for golf, biking
and strolls – even for those of us north of the Sun Belt – just as there was
time to see summer friends at Rockaway Beach, to grab a Spaldeen and hit the
streets, to enjoy an amusement park getaway. And baseball’s calendar is just
reaching its crucial weeks.
A time to build up, a time to break down .
. .
But there’s no missing the signposts of a new year.
A school bus rolls by slowly before 8:30 each weekday
morning. The last backyard tomatoes are nearly ripe and shiny basil leaves
are less abundant. Sprinkler hoses and watering cans no longer need to be
used twice a day, just about every day. Already the fireflies are gone; how
much longer will cricket concertos stir visions of camp? Soon the geese will
head farther than a nearby lake.
Summer seems to unfurl gradually, blossoming with a
leisurely rise of temperatures, fragrances, birdsongs and petals. Not so at
the tail end, when schedules fill, days shorten and we want to keep August’s
door propped open a bit longer . . . before floating candles on the pool,
boarding the bus.
A time to
laugh, a time of love
A time you may embrace . . .
Inevitably, these
seasonal markers create a reflecting pond of camp nostalgia. The calendar
that defined our time together still defines each year’s clearest transition
point, an intersection between play and purpose, kicking back and buckling
down, Catskills and city.
