Nope, your calendar's not wrong: it's still just early days of August, when lawns unravel into little more than crabgrass and heat leaves everything limp. The leaves of the kudzu and the poison ivy are glossy and lustrous twining up the trunks of the trees. The crepe myrtles have littered the ground with brassy fuschia blossoms, stridently attempting to add some color to things. Last week, when we walked from the car to the pool, wilted fluff from mimosas spangled the pavement.
But even as August does what August does best, we have The First Day of School, and today the Girleens, newly-backpacked and outfitted, are off at their respective schools (first grade and preschool) experiencing life without maternal intervention.
The house is very quiet.
The temperatures may be inching up into the nineties, but all you have to do is walk a first grader into their school building, opening those heavy metal doors into the smell of fresh paint and freshly-waxed linoleum floor that says first-day-of-school like nothing else can, to feel fall's onset. It's there, like an underglaze under the panorama of summer.
There's crisper weather ahead. You can taste it on the tip of your tongue.
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