May is here and, indeed, is already more than half gone. May in North Carolina means green everything, trees in full leaf, and the roses along my fence blooming in abundant frenzy.
And it also means– again, in North Carolina– heat. Generally speaking, this time of year means the warmest of my dress-clothes for work. Sleevelessness, certainly. One wouldn’t bother with a sweater.
Instead, of late, we’re doing what we do in mid-October: wrapping ourselves in bathrobes for breakfast, donning layers before we head out the door in the morning, turning the heat on in the car. And in the afternoon it’s the opposite: the children come to the car with the morning’s sweatshirts tied about their waists. Today we used the air conditioner on the way home.
This can be confusing. How to dress of a morning? What time of year is it? Where are we in the scheme of things? Emma asked me this afternoon, “Mom, why is it so cold the morning?”
I’ve made the clothing transfers. The children have access now to only a few long-sleeved items. Jeans and long pants seems archaic somehow; to see that the children have selected said items when they emerge for breakfast in the morning seems almost an atavistic gesture. I stop myself from saying, “Are you sure?”
But it’s downright cold out there. I can’t fault them for their selections.
And last night, when it never grew truly warm outside, when the most the afternoon had to show for itself was a temperature hovering in the sixties, and when dinnertime rolled around with a high wind frothing the trees, I, too, reached back for a wintertime favorite. Yes, when it was time to grade papers, to sit quietly at the table, children abed, and turn my attention yet again to my students, I had to overlook the silver backs of the leaves, that image of the utterly summertime-storm, and do the thing I do in the winter, in the fall, in the earliest, bare-branched days of spring: I made myself a cup of hot tea.
