The Clouds of August

• Posted by Ann Teve September 4, 2008 Filed in Society Girl's Personal Blogs 1,499 views
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  September 1st isn't the first day of autumn but it sure feels that way. August isn't the last month of summer either, but it sure feels that way. August is the transition and this is seen most strongly in the clouds.
  The summers of Southern Ontario, Canada -- that part that dips further south than the northern border of California and nestled as they are in the fold of the Great Lakes -- are hot and humid. Summer clouds are stormy, low and dark, laden with rain. The sky is hidden. The sun retreats.
  The clouds of August, arriving every year in the first week of August, are bold Cumulo-nimbus clouds, a confident dazzling white, distinct, dynamic and active, shifting from shape to shape against a stunning perfect blue sky, as they course purposefully across that blue.  The sun idles through the clouds as if wandering through an orchard, rays of warmth striking your cheek now and again like a reassuring touch. As a teen, I would lie alone on my back in the new mowed grass of the backyard (garden for the English) and try to make sense of what I saw in these clouds, and make sense of what I saw in myself.
  I can still watch clouds for hours. Each day now admiring the sky is every day I've experienced. Past sensations are drawn from deep memory and blended with the present and all of my experiences exist in the same moment. The clouds make you wonder, "What now?"
  These clouds of August, these clouds of transition from summer to fall are my reminder of my transition. Perhaps in some ways my personality has come together, bold and dynamic, against the new stark backdrop of my life. I am just a month and a half from my first full year as Ann. There are events and people that I must thank for this. I have not done this alone. I have often been admired as courageous. I'm not so sure that it is for me. In some ways it almost seemed capitulation to the forces within.
  The fall will be a period of change for me. The year has made a difference to me, if only in the confidence that I now have. It seems that confidence is the most convincing outfit that I can wear.