“The kind of heat that August brings eclipses hot in an odd way; the atmosphere radiates with such intensity that you know fall is on its way.”
This week’s episode of The Dog Days is going to be shift from the norm. My wonderful husband, Kyle, has written a guest post about summer heat, vacation, and thoughts on life and death. It’s a refreshing break from the stories about dogs and it gives us a little more to ponder as summer comes to a close.
If you have been following this blog lately, then you already know that Jamie has been writing about the dog days of summer. Since she has been so courteous as to extend an invitation for me to write something this week, I will keep to that theme—though I will approach it a bit differently. Bear with me.
In our master’s program, Jamie and I had a professor who taught us the power, process, and dynamics of group therapy. In our process recordings we were forced to reflect on as many of the exchanges we could remember from each group session. Our professor asked us if we noticed a trend. No one spoke up with an answer and, as she was a pretty thorough Freudian, she informed us that the topic that kept coming up was death. Like a gyre, the conversation spiraled from humdrum talk of classes and grades to the profundities of life. You could set your watch by it; every session, the group would end up ending up with talk of the end. What does that have to do with the dog days of summer though?
In the deep south, the August heat chases dogs to the coolness of shades, preferably ones under the porch or, better yet, IN the house. The kind of heat that August brings eclipses hot in an odd way; the atmosphere radiates with such intensity that you know fall is on its way. The burning gusts of August will eventually give way to a milder fall—continuing a cycle that began before us and will continue long after us.
The dog days of summer are my favorite days of the year, weather wise. The heat signals something in my unconscious and creates a longing to return to places of my youth—places where happy memories and moments were shared with my family. Just about every year of my life, we loaded up in a vehicle and traveled to the same vacation spot. I am sitting there now, which, of course, makes it here-now. I am here now, again. This here is the last place I ever saw my grandfather draw a breath. I am sitting a few feet away from the same spot that I perched upon so many years ago, as I strained to catch a few glimpses of my papa. Continue reading
J. G. McNease 