Happy Augtober

Happy August 1st.

Happy first day of a month that isn’t fully summer-y (even if here in the South in name only).

Happy day after Harry Potter’s birthday.

Happy Lughnasadh for those that celebrate.

Lughnasadh is an ancient harvest festival named for the Celtic god Lugh. Allegedly he established it in honor of his (foster/step) mother, who died after working in the fields. All I’m going to say is THAT’S ABOUT RIGHT. What a historically accurate way to honor a woman. Wait until she’s literally worked herself into the ground, then throw her a festival she can’t even enjoy, and the whole thing still gets named after a dude.

Anywho.

And for the rest of us who have a loving and unreasonable attachment to fall, happy Augtober. It’s an in-between time of the year. There are a lot of those, they just don’t get many accolades. August, not quite summer, not quite fall. February, not the fun part of winter with a throwaway holiday full of candy (and if you’re here in the South super confusing because sometimes there are daffodils too).

I’ve been thinking about sub-seasons a lot lately. Life tends to get divided up into strictly defined segments. Summer, fall, Christmas, spring… repeat. But it’s not really like that.

For example, there isn’t just “summer.”

There’s hopeful summer, when you can still go outside without feeling like the sun has taken a hit out on you.

There’s pool summer, where everyone is living their best life at the community center and you smile when you see bathing suits drying on the bathroom towel racks and swimming goggles on the dining room table.

Then there’s tomato sandwich summer, and the garden kicks into overdrive and when anyone asks what’s for dinner you immediately say “we have a million tomatoes, so tomatoes.”

And then there’s end-game summer, which IMO is the HARDEST.

It’s the time where every woman I know is sitting at the very back of the struggle bus carrying a shopping bag with a broken strap and the AC has gone out. Stay-at-home moms can’t send their kids out into the furnace-yard and are instead getting climbed on like a personal jungle gym while kids yell “I’m hungry” or “She won’t stop touching me with her foot.”

Working moms feel guilty about daycare and try to make the most of it after work and just end up hot, exhausted, and wishing it was Christmas break already.

I speak on behalf of work-from-home moms when I say that screen time limits are a thing of the past because you need to get through Teams meetings without your six-year-old bursting into your office shirtless, with underwear on his head, so he can display his new horror-themed LEGO creation, complete with fake blood, for your CEO.

Did I just inadvertently share a personal story of my own? Whoopsie.

Everyone else has their own version. Teachers are eyeing school supply aisles with the Big Dread. Gardeners are tired of watering crispy plants. Even the dog has stopped wanting to go outside (unless they’re Kevin, who thinks the next-door neighbor's dog is his girlfriend when in reality she super hates his guts).

But now we’re in a new sub-season.

We’re entering Augtober.

It’s not quite summer, not quite fall, and we’ve started thinking about the hoodies in the back of our closet, Halloween decor, and the kids going back to school so we don’t have to wake up at 1 a.m. to the dulcet tones of our teenager cooking an omelet at 1 a.m., which means we have to drag ourselves out of bed to make sure the oven is turned off.

Our lives are no different. They are often categorized as baby, child, young, middle-aged, and old. But they’re much more nuanced than that.

Six years ago I still felt like a young person borrowing the middle-aged title. I was forty but I still looked thirty-two, my body mostly cooperated, and if I wanted to lose ten pounds, I’d lose ten pounds. That was early middle age.

Somewhere between then and now I crossed into a different season, the middle-middle-aged years. I now know the location of my heating pad at all times. I buy Advil in bulk and also have my own personal bottle that no one is allowed to touch. I have chin hairs that are way too enthusiastic, while the hair on top of my head sheds too much. Hormones cooperating and losing ten pounds? Fuggettaboutit.

The point is, nothing is as finite as calendars say it is. There’s not just summer and fall. There’s not just middle age and old age. There are the in-between times, like now, when my garden still brings me joy but it’s also looking scorched and tired. There are in-between times, like now, when I’m not young and I’m not truly old.

And there are beautiful things in every sub-season, if we take time to notice them. There are fall candles AND 90-degree days. There are chin hairs AND a lot more wisdom. There are bodies that don’t cooperate like they used to, and minds that finally do.

So happy Augtober.

May your garden be less crispy, your teenager remember to turn off the oven, your hoodie weather arrive (for the love of God) soon, your apple pie candles smell extra aromatic, and if anyone throws you a festival, may they at least have the decency to name it after you.