There Will Be Blood

Happy kidney stone season! It’s the dog days of summer. Actually, those days just ended. The ancient Greeks called the end of July through early August the “dog days” because the nose of Canis Major, Sirius, would rise in the sky just before the sunrise. So you have no excuse to by lying around like a lazy dog in the Carolina heat. Get out there and get dehydrated. The ancient Roman festival of Volturnalia, the river god, is coming up later this week. Get out on a river, avoid harmful amoebas, and enjoy the last days of the harvest. Because autumn is hiding in the forest and it’s about to show itself. Any day now yellow leaves will show up on the sides of the highways. First, it comes for the poplars.

You see, mortality is on my mind like it is every year of this time. I love summer. I mourn it before it even leaves. Just look at the fields. The late summer wildflowers are at their peak. Most pastures are on their last or next to last hay cutting. There’s something both jubilant and depressing about it.

Maybe I am just thinking this because I almost blew myself up a few weeks ago. Not on purpose but through a distinct lack of brainpower while hooking up the dryer in our new (100-year-old, rather) house. I’ve been thinking about it a lot at 3:30 in the morning. I recently heard a quote and I can’t figure out who said it. Now I can’t remember the quote. Oh. Something like “every man is a coward at 3:30 in the morning.”  Perhaps it is worse this time of year. The season of darkness is right around the corner.

Who of us has not had both elation and despair in August?

My kids had a bit of both this week. School is about to start. In our house, this year, that means it’s vaccination season. YAY! It’s a momentous time for our family also because Harlan is going to kindergarten. But wait, he’s not ready! He can’t even wipe himself properly! His diet of sugar, ketchup and occasional meat products has left him smaller than the other 5-year-olds. Are they guarding the doors? Look, I try not to be a helicopter parent or lawnmower parent or whatever they call it now (“they” being those people who guilt you no matter whether you hold your kid’s hand across the street or catapult him across via medieval war implement).

So we got behind on the old jabs, the shots, the vaccinations, whatever you want to call them. I needed to get them caught up or else concoct some sort of fictitious religious belief to sneak past the Wake County school administrators. Verdukianism, anyone?

That’s why we were at the doctor’s office this week. The kids were elated. They’ve been talking about shots for weeks. They knew they had one more round of shots before going to school. So they’ve been playing up the whole “I get a treat after shots” thing. Harlan wanted a sticker, chocolate milk, and a sucker. Cerys wanted a litany of sweets, “unitorns,” and other various mythical characters — a list too long to cite here.

We walked into the waiting room and they immediately walked up to the biggest kid and asked him what he was in for. He looked at me like “should I respond?” but before he could, Harlan informed him that he was there for his last shots. AND he was getting a treat. AND he knew all the Pokemon characters on the poor kid’s shirt. Cerys ran circles around the kid as Harlan shook him down with conversation. Lucky for him, he got called back. The kid about ran from the waiting room to whatever awaited him back there in the doctor’s lair.

Finally the nurse called their names. They ran behind her almost stepping on her heals. She weighed them. Harlan insisted he go first, the opposite of what he would do 10 minutes later when the shots showed up.

Then she left us in the room. Their energy started to wane a bit as minutes passed. The thrill of future treats was beginning to pale as they took in their surroundings. The medical waste disposal bins on the wall, the stainless steel trays with the cotton-tipped sticks and tongue depressors they couldn’t touch. The short stool on wheels occupied them until Harlan spun Cerys off into the wall.

Things got quiet. We sat there listening to cart after cart coming down the hall outside the closed door. As each one got closer, Harlan would yell “she’s almost here!” and Cerys would shriek. Another cart came down the hall. Not the one. It was getting tortuous. And then there was another one — slower than the others as it approached our door. No shrieking or commenting this time. They were frozen, eyes fixed on the door. It opened. There she was. The nurse with the tray of four syringes. Things went south at that moment. Harlan suddenly became chivalrous and pushed Cerys to the front. There was crying. Screaming. I remember holding them down, one at a time. And then it was over. Four little pink legs covered in Candy Land and Incredible Hulk band-aids.

We walked down the hall and Harlan, like a seasoned pro, greeted a little girl having her blood pressure taken. “I don’t have to get any more shots until I’m 11!” Cerys, not watching where she was going, knocked the sucker basket off the table and we all walked out. Freshly vaccinated and not a bit jaded. Suckers in hand and smiling big August grins.

There’s a moral in there somewhere — maybe even one that makes me feel better about the end of summer. As for now, though, enjoy these last days of the harvest! And don’t forget Volturnalia.