The Living Calendar

That last Septembral burst of rain was a walloper. Roads in the city became canals, subways showers. A sea lion swam out of its pond at an outdoor zoo. Neighborhood names became news you could use. Crown Heights = Mt. Ararat. Park Slope = the Red Sea, after Moses left. The powers that be warned us not to travel unless we were fleeing inundation, but as soon as it became safe to do so we took the bus upstate.

Thanks to crummy weather and illness we had missed an entire month. In that time the seasons visibly ticked. The snowball clusters of the hydrangeas which had blazed like headlights were now darkened to a deep, mellow pink. Oaks and hickories still kept all their green leaves, but maples were half colored and half bare. The garden showed the passage of time most clearly.