We're closing in on that season. The month when only Becs remains in the world of central Jersey. Where does everyone go? And why can't they just stay there? Or why didn't they take me, too?
When I was a kid, my family never took vacations. (The tradition continues, largely uninterrupted.) All up and down the block, my pals were gone for a week or in some cases, two weeks. My best friend was like some kind of wealthy heiress/princess, because her family stayed in the Holiday Inn. They would go places where they had no relatives. This boggled my mind. (I was 19 before I stayed in a Holiday Inn and I thought it was wonderful. Actually, right now, I would still think it was wonderful.)
Take Me to the Rivah
Where did everyone go? When I lived in Virginia, everybody went to the Rivah. To this day, I'm still not sure which river they went to.
Everyone's family had "a cabin on the rivah" and my pals invited their other pals to go along with them.
I stayed home and rode my bike in the post-Apocalyptic world of August.
It's the End of the World as We Know It
Worst of all were the summers I was in college. I had an apartment in Richmond, near the school I went to. If May started the Silent Season, August was the very height of it. Humidity shimmered up from the concrete and melting asphalt.
The Richmond ladies stayed in their little apartments, leaning against doilies, fanning themselves so their organdy dresses ruffled in the damp breeze and if you saw any of them on the sidewalk, they looked like someone had mistaken them for ironing.
I rode my bike up and down the street of the Fan District. Everyone was gone. Everyone but me and the Richmond ladies whose nephews didn't invite them to the Rivah.
The worst days felt like I saw them through a thick, sickly yellow cellophane, dead and flat, and it felt like they would never end.
But eventually, people would start trickling back. They would tell wond'rous stories of their adventures and I felt so clueless.
Why didn't I go on adventures myself? What was I missing?
Plus ca change...
We're back in the season where everyone's going away. Everyone but #*%*$* Fred and me.
I haven't saved up for a vacation, but I can feel myself starting to gnaw at my own vitals. I'm going to have to go somewhere, somehow, soon.
All too soon, everyone will come rushing back from vacation, clogging up the roads again, energized, bright-eyed as a coked-out 19 year old, not understanding why I bear more than a passing resemblance to Bertha Mason Rochester.
Because I was here while you all went to the moon. I kept the earth in its place, me and the Richmond ladies and the weight of it has driven us all a little mad. Welcome back.
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