SEPTEMBER IN AUGUST

Morning in May-Retta.

It’s not September yet, but it’s beginning to have that Septembery feel around here.

We’ve had a few mornings with temperatures in the mid- to upper sixties - hardly something you’d expect in August.  Especially here, where the sultry Dog Days have not really run their course until mid-October.

The days are beginning to shorten.  I notice it when I leave the house for morning minyan.  It’s just a little darker... and the sky is often painted with beautiful rose and orange clouds.  (Now that it has stopped raining every single damned day, at least for the time being.)

The elementary school kids and their parents wait for the school bus in an expectant little knot over by the tennis courts.  It’s a social event for the parents as well as the kids.  I wave to them as I cruise slowly by.  My kids left that age cohort at least two decades ago, but I still remember those early morning farewells... and my own elementary school days.  And that adds to the Septemberness of things - for me, at least - because our schools did not begin their year until after Labor Day.  (Here, they’ve been at it for almost a month by now.)

I’ve been out of elementary school for fifty years now.  I wonder what kind of world these kids standing there at the bus stop will be living in another half-century from now... and whether they will remember the long-ago mornings of September-in-August back in 2013.