Ballad for Summer’s End

Well, it happened again. I heard a song on the Starbucks playlist whose artist I didn’t know. This time, I was fast enough to ask the barista while the song was still playing, but the app wouldn’t open. Another pleasant baritone, another catchy melody, but the names of both elude me, and all due to a computer slowdown. I’m not sure if it’s the same slowdown we’ve been having at work, but it’s really no matter—the point is, if I don’t like a song, it will probably play ad nauseam. If I do like it, and ask someone about it, I’m just a little too late to find out what it is, and they won’t play it again for another three months at least.

You’re probably thinking, “Wordplay, can’t you find anything else to write about?” And the answer is, “Not really.” There’s a real end of the summer feeling here: it’s hot, but very still; students have started to appear here and there, but at the same time, there’s a feeling of absence, as if quite a few people are out of town on vacation. It’s neither here nor there, just that typical August feeling of vacancy. If you’re in a university town and are neither a student nor a professor, you sense the pause in the academic calendar, but since it doesn’t affect you, you have neither anxiety about getting everything done in time nor the anticipation of a brand-new academic year. It’s just a hot, drowsy lull. It still looks like summer, there’s no hint of fall yet (some years the nights have started to cool a bit by now, but not this year), and if you work in retail, you’re probably unpacking things for a Labor Day sale. You’re still thinking ice cream; apple cider hasn’t yet entered your thoughts; and winter is still as a distant dream.

This is not going to be the lyrical “changing of the seasons” post I did a couple of times in the past. Not really feeling that elegiac Wordsworth melancholy right now; it’s more of a heat-induced stupefaction. If I could encapsulate what I am feeling, it would be more along the lines of, “If only I had my own front porch, and my own pitcher of iced tea, so I could sit and sip and listen to the crickets in peace and look up at the stars once in a while.” I’ve never had that in my entire adult life, which seems like a shame, but the next place I live will have at least a balcony, if not a porch, if there’s any justice in the world. I lived in Lexington for many years with barely a glimpse of fireflies and certainly no place to sit outside and enjoy the long summer evenings that are one of the best things about Kentucky, but maybe that will change some time.

With nothing else going on, this seems like a good time to entertain idle questions, in lieu of falling asleep in the heat and ending up down some rabbit hole. So here’s one: if you were in the same predicament as the people in the movie Groundhog Day but actually got to pick the day that keeps repeating, what day would it be? For me, it would probably be a day in early summer, a day of bright blue skies and puffy clouds. I don’t think it would be August—although if I ever get that porch swing and glass of iced tea, I might change my mind about that. Spring is gorgeous here, but it’s not quite summer. Fall is also quite nice much of the time, but it means summer is over with for another year. And although winter has its own beauty, it’s possibly enjoyed best of all in small doses—at least, that’s my opinion.

So this is my end-of-summer post, and we’ll dispense with all the Persephone and Demeter references and Keatsian ode-to-autumn rhapsodies this time around because I’m afraid I was starting to repeat myself a little bit. I will report to you with a hint of disapproval that since I work in retail, I’ve already spotted the presence of “seasonal merchandise” and am dreading the moment, which will probably be next week, when I walk to the front of the store and see Halloween yard decor and animatronic ghouls. Not because I’m scared of those goobers, but because it interferes with my seasonal clock. Werewolves in August? Sheesh, whose idea was that?

What the Groundhog Saw

It's surprising how many different names Groundhog Day has. I wrote about the cross-quarter days--of which February 2 is one--last November, and I knew Groundhog Day was called Imbolc (in the Celtic tradition) and Candlemas in England, and that it has associations with Saint Brigid and with lambs. I'd forgotten that in the Catholic liturgical year it's known as Presentation Day or Purification Day, which has to do with the presentation of Jesus in the temple and rites of purification for his mother according to ancient law. I'm trying to remember if this is also when we used to have the Blessing of the Throats, when the priest went around and blessed everyone with two crossed candles to ward off colds. I'm not sure if this is still done, though it was kind of a charming idea.

There's a lot of old European lore associated with February 2, some of which has made it to America. We think of it as the midpoint of winter, when thoughts turn toward spring, but apparently in some places of old it was considered the start of spring. That's hard to imagine here, since January and February are deep-dyed winter months, with typically nothing springlike going on. I recall a year when a mild spell at February's end lasted long enough that it seemed spring had come early, which was cause for much remark. That I remember it so well shows how unusual it was. Let's hope it remains unusual (despite its loveliness), because however much one dislikes winter, February is supposed to be cold, at least around here.

My birthday and the Super Bowl both fall close to Groundhog Day, though I had never really given it much thought before. I don't know if there is any significance to being born on or near a cross-quarter day, but having learned that in some blessed places February 2 signaled the start of spring, I now have a new way of thinking about my birthday. Just the bare hint of an association with spring so close to my date of birth is radical enough that I'm going to adopt it regardless of what the weather is actually doing. If I'd known this a long time ago, it would have helped me through many freezing, sleeting, blizzarding birthday celebrations, but that's no matter--I know now.

Regarding the Super Bowl, I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence or not that it falls near the February cross-quarter. Football seems to have no connection with candles, ewes, lambs, Saint Brigid, groundhogs, motherhood or any other cross-quarter traditions you could name, but you never know, there might be a hidden link, just as there's a connection between the November cross-quarter, harvest, and Election Day. Candlemas in the late Middle Ages was apparently heavy on candlelit processions and the intoning of chant, all very pious and reverent; football (and the spectator sport of consuming heavy food and drink) seems rather more Roman in style (though February in ancient Rome actually marked a time of purification). However that may be, it does seem somehow American to mark the deepest part of winter with a head-bashing contest.

As for me, I happened to be looking through some old calendars on the evening of February 1 (Groundhog Eve, if you will) when I came across the special edition newspaper I had totally forgotten I'd saved from President Obama's first inauguration. While I don't know if the January date of our presidential inaugurations (since FDR) signifies anything other than a date conveniently close (but not too close) to New Year's, it does fall fairly near the February cross-quarter. (Let me remark parenthetically that I looked at that newspaper in some consternation--speaking of head-bashing and headaches--before throwing it away with some old calendars I found in the same cubby.) 

The next day, as it happens, I found an article in which someone was discussing possible ways to celebrate Candlemas/Groundhog Day/Imbolc in modern times, and cleaning house was one suggested activity. Glad to know I was on to something, I took down my little Christmas tree (which I'd been saving for Candlemas), dusted, mopped, shook out the rugs, and took out the trash containing all the old calendars and newspaper. I often play music while cleaning, but this Groundhog Day I actually found myself singing along. Well, spring fever will do that to you.