EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Summer’s lease hath all too short a date

When Canada geese migrate north in the spring they honk like some impromptu victory parade, gleeful car drivers who had nothing to do with the big win. The birds generally don’t squonk during the dog days of summer. Ann and I never hear them in July. But come this time of year when our outdoor morning coffees turn tepid too quickly the geese begin to stir, noticing the new nip in the dawn air. For us the sunlight and the shadows it casts appear a little sharper, more defined, as if we’ve refreshed the prescriptions for our eyeglasses.

Leaves turn yellow and silently drift down onto surfaces where I appreciate them a little less. Crabapples and buckeye conkers fall like hard rain and bush berries ripen into red. A few late bloomers aside, the garden plants are tired, spent, especially the bleeding hearts. Time to think about cutting everything back down to the black soil; undo the frenzy of our green spring planting fever. The lawn might be worthy of two and a half more mows between now and Thanksgiving – the half merely to burn through the motor’s gasoline before winter storage.

This week Ann and I bought a pair of patio table umbrellas for next to nothing for next year. An inexpensive act of faith. They will not be unfurled until late next May, once the garden’s been attended to. We purchased the umbrellas more as a distant promise, that we will both be alive and healthy enough to relax under their cast shade next year for seven weeks because summer must surely come again. 

Ann made her career as a music teacher in Edmonton’s public school system. For her and other teachers and academics we know the end of August is the beginning of the new year; January is only relevant as a pinch-punch-first-of-the-month calendar page turn. I’d be insane not to embrace their ingrained optimism of a fresh start even as nature girds to run the Canada geese out of town, send them south for the winter.   

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