These surely are the dog days of August, making us sweat and enticing us into the streets to chant “Attica, Attica” along with a young Al Pacino.I am confident this will be the last worst week in terms of temperature for the summer. We may still have some hot days but with September comes a different underlayment for all that heat.  

Even if humidity is high, there is still that certain something that promises fall.  The heat may be awful, but it doesn’t penetrate in quite the same way it does in July. Weeks can be peppered with days that are downright autumnal, and they catch us by surprise, the way they just sort of waft around us. The heat then returns but so, too, do   the signs that signal the fading away of summer.  First in the flowerbed where the annuals are already checking out, then the trees and burning bushes give hints of the reds and golds to come. 

My house project has kept me from being the good aunt I want to be, tying me down when I should be helping my niece, Katie, with the twins and Cy.  I don’t worry too much, though, because she has good help, and none more wonderful than her next door neighbor, Bev.  We all should be so lucky as to have a Bev.  She has taken this little family next door to heart, and there are popsicles in her garage fridge to prove it. 

Cy makes a bee-line for her whenever she is out.  First, he loves Bev, and second, he loves popsicles.  She is that neighbor, who hears the babies screaming and comes over in her unassuming way and offers to hang out for a while, or to take Cy for a walk.  She is always uncovering toys and wonders her kids and grandkids no longer need:  a bouncy house, and the best thing ever, a play house with doors and windowsills.  Cy loves it and he “mows” the grass around his little castle almost every day.  

She comes in with little duds for Cy and the babies, “free, practically,” she always says, because she is a savvy shopper and hits the sales.  I’ve met her daughter, too, someone else Cy loves, because she gets him popsicles, as well,  but only after asking Dad if it is okay.  Those neighbors. A true blessing for a young family, and they love her. 

And Maui.  What an awful thing is the devastation and loss of life in Maui. Paradise is not supposed to burn, and from everyone I know who has been to Hawaii, it is pure paradise.

The banyan tree in Lahaina, grown huge and branching into sixteen trunks.  Early on this is one of the first things my friends who have seen it were sad about. That was before the horrifying news about the loss of life began to trickle in, and now the grief is for them, and the families still working to locate loved ones.  

The ones who died in the sea trying to escape the flames.  The ones who died running inland.  And so many of them children, it is feared, in the town of Lahaina, where the parents were at work and they were at home when the flames arrived. A terrible tragedy and we pray for our island neighbors. 

We said goodbye to Ann and Logan on Saturday, my sister-in-law’s mother and her second husband.  They were college sweethearts for a time, and reconnected  decades later at a class reunion at their old college.  By then, Ann was living in Owensboro and Logan joined her, and they would have been married twenty years this Thanksgiving. 

In truth, we lost both of them a while ago, Logan five years ago, and Ann in February.  But it was their wish to have their ashes buried together, and the blended families joining for a celebration of their lives together, and sharing a meal at the Moonlite, the place we first gathered to celebrate them as a couple that long-ago November. 

This was Ann and Logan.  Easy, fun, practical, and happy as teenagers, sweet and quirky. 

They were permanent fixtures for every family gathering, our bonus grandparents, easy to have around and easy to love.  I am grateful for the gift of both of them, grateful for the extra family members their union brought to our lives.  Grateful for the way my sister-in-law and brother took care of them.  It is no small thing, the simple love of family.