Bidding August Goodbye

The Boston Herald

One more week and the ride will be over. I can feel it slowing down, hear the music easing to a halt. I'm trying hard not to anticipate the end, to savor the moment and luxuriate in now. But tomorrow is in the shadows, in the shrinking days, in the orange-red of the mountain ash, in the still, August nights, and in my children who are so eager for the ride to end.

My son, who has spent the summer in San Diego, phones almost  every day now. "Did you get any mail from Bridgewater? Has my class schedule come? Can you and Dad pick me up on the 2nd?" My daughter walks through the door with bags full of dish towels and pot holders and a table cloth she got on sale, and dishes her boyfriend's mother gave her, all kinds of domestic things for her apartment, for her first real home away from home. She's living off campus this year, not in a dorm, and preparing to move has become her passion.

Then there's my youngest. She's starting high school in two weeks, a fact I know, but don't really believe. She must have grown up at night while I slept, because all the rest of the time I was here watching. And yet I never saw the changes that turned a little girl into a trial-size version of the adult she will grow to be.

She has already left this summer behind. She has school-shopped andreorganized her closet and is in the waiting-for-September stage. All my children are waiting for September, ready to leap from summer into the fall and all that the fall will bring.

But not me. I am reluctant to abandon these final days. I am in no hurry to give up what I wait for all year long: the feeling of finally being exactly where I want to be. I love August. I love the sound of the word, its meaning, "inspiring awe," its hot, hazy days, its steamy, cricket-filled nights.

I love its overgrown gardens and hedges and its leaves dried out by heat and sun. I love its lushness, the way it spills sun into all the gloomy corners and heat into every part of the house. A white flower, nearly hidden among a thicket of greens, emits a headier scent than lilacs. The earth is ripe. Take a bite, August says.

But suddenly all the talk is of school and schedules and better sleeping weather and getting "back to normal." And I want to block my ears. I don't want to hear about "normal." Normal is shoes and lists and school lunches and schedules and meals that are more than hot dogs and ice cream.

So I cling to now, because ever since the day my grown-up son first stepped onto a school bus, I have resented September. My son left, and almost the next day his sister left, and right behind her was the baby, who is now 14. September comes and it steals my children and takes the summer away.

I am used to this annual good-bye, but I don't like it. I ache for what I see slipping away.