Goodbye July and hello August. August is a month with a character all of its own. It’s still summer, but the stores are packed with fresh notebooks (there’s nothing more irresistible to me than a brand-new notebook, its pages empty and full of promise), pens and boxes of crayons with upright posture. School hasn’t started, but it’s right around the corner.

Sometimes in August, at night, you can feel the early tendrils of fall, tugging us toward more serious mindsets and away from lazy summer thoughts. But August is summer, real summer. Sometimes it makes you swelter and just laughs. Sometimes, like today, the weather is perfect and you think about the coming cold.

August can be angry, with roaring, rolling thunderstorms, the rain driving as though from a faucet, the lightning awakening the entire sky. A strange, hot wind might blow under swirling gray clouds, and you remember that this planet’s will is so much bigger than our own.

It often gets overlooked, with eyes ahead on what’s to come as schedules tighten in September, but it’s not a month to rush past, it’s not a holding place on the way to something else. Ignore that school supply aisle. It’s not autumn yet.

Need something to read? Check out  Her Cousin Much Removed,  The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management and Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only) .

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