Time sometimes seems more like a spiral than a cycle for me. It’s a funnel, spreading up and out, looping over months and seasons from farther and farther away.
Some years are just fucking tornadoes. Just a nice breeze today, though.
I’m very far away from my earliest Septembers, when I slogged through school in a Children’s Allerest fog. But I’m peering straight down at them from this one, as we try to find the right antihistamine for my son. He doesn’t want chewables anymore, but unless the pill is coated, he has trouble swallowing it quickly…._____
I’ve just finished An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters. I love to reread the Brother Cadfael mysteries seasonally, but there aren’t many for August or September. The book ends with this:
“September was again September, mellowed and fruitful after the summer heat and drought. Much of the abundant weight of fruit had fallen unplumped by reason of the dryness, but even so there would still be harvest enough for thanksgiving. After every extreme the seasons righted themselves, and won back the half at least of what was lost. So might the seasons of men right themselves, with a little help by way of rain from heaven.”
It seems so hopeful to say so. And wise, if it’s true.
Which seems like a pretty big “if” to me, living in a time of violent people and violent weather.
It is Brother Cadfael himself, peacefully surveying his fruit trees, thinking these final September thoughts.
And one of the reasons I love that character, it occurs to me, is that his hopefulness is tempered by his use of “might” in that last sentence. So it seems more like wisdom, after all.
Our own pears.
marniere 