Susan has been reading a novel on the screened porch for the better part of a week. She won’t tell me the title because she says I’ll start reading it over her shoulder, which is unfair, because I only did that once, with the Marilynne Robinson, and it was because she kept reading sentences out loud and I wanted the context.
The porch is open again. This is the first May fact that matters to me. We unlatched the screens on the second Saturday of the month, which Susan considers early and I consider exactly right. The cushions came out of the garage. The ceiling fan resumed its wobble. Hank found his spot in the corner, the one where the afternoon sun hits the floorboards, and he laid down with a grunt that suggested he remembered it and was relieved it was still there.
He is slower this year. I keep saying that and Susan keeps not responding, which is her way of agreeing without committing to the sadness of it. He takes the porch steps one at a time now, each one a small decision. He still follows me from room to room, but he arrives later than he used to, and when he does, he looks at me as if to confirm that I waited.
I did. I always do.
What I’ve been thinking about, these first real weeks of the warm season, is the difference between the spring that promises and the spring that delivers. April in Virginia is all potential. The redbud blooms. The tomato seedlings sit on the kitchen windowsill. You talk about what you’re going to plant, what you’re going to read, how you’re going to spend the long evenings. It’s a pleasant kind of anticipation, and it has almost nothing to do with the actual living.
May is different. May is the thing itself. The tomatoes are in the ground. The evening light lasts until eight-thirty and you don’t remark on it anymore because it just is. The porch is not something you’re going to open. It’s open. You’re sitting on it. The book is in your hand.
Susan’s book, the one she won’t name, has been migrating around the house. I found it on the kitchen counter Tuesday morning, face-down, spine cracked the way she cracks them no matter how many times I suggest otherwise. I picked it up. I read two pages standing there. Then I put it back exactly where she’d left it, which is a form of deception I have made peace with.
There is a particular pleasure in reading something someone else is in the middle of. You’re not starting from the beginning. You don’t have the context. You drop into someone else’s attention, and for a few minutes you see through their pace, their interest, their margin notes (Susan writes in her books, which I consider brave and she considers obvious). It’s like overhearing a conversation that wasn’t meant for you and finding it more interesting than any conversation that was.
I think this is what the best months do, the settled ones, the ones that aren’t announcing themselves. They let you pay attention to what’s actually in front of you instead of what’s coming next. The porch is open. The book is there. The dog is warm in the corner. Nobody needs to be anywhere.
Hank is twelve. Susan says thirteen, but I have the vet records and I am right about this. He doesn’t chase squirrels anymore. He watches them from the porch with an expression that I choose to read as philosophical, though Susan says it’s just his knees. Either way, he is paying better attention than he used to, and I suspect that is not despite his slowness but because of it.
The porch light comes on at dusk. The pages turn. Something is blooming in the neighbor’s yard that smells like every May I can remember and none of them specifically. I don’t need to name it. It’s enough to sit here and notice.
Dale Parsons Editor-in-Chief Charlottesville, Virginia
