When I was growing up, August was always referred to as the “dog days of summer.” But for me, August feels more like the Sunday of summer.
June is all anticipation. School has just ended. The days stretch endlessly ahead, filled with sunshine and possibility. July is all celebration—the fireworks, family reunions, vacations, cookouts, and long evenings that seem as though they’ll never end. But August…August is slower. Laid back and lazy. It’s the month that reminds us of a Sunday drive. It takes its time as it meanders with no particular place in mind to go.
Even as children, we felt it. We may not have known why, but somewhere deep inside we understood that summer had begun its slow retreat. The freedom of bicycles and bare feet would soon give way to alarm clocks, sharpened pencils, and the routines of another school year.
Yet like that long country road, August insists we take our time.
August afternoons grow heavy with the drone of cicadas, their chorus rising from the trees as though they are determined to sing every last note of summer. At dusk, the katydids begin their rhythmic chant, filling the warm darkness while the moon climbs slowly above the treetops in the eastern sky. Curtains stir in open windows. Porch conversations stretch long after supper. Somewhere, a screen door slams. A dog barks in the distance.
There is a particular smell to August that is nearly impossible to describe. Sun-baked grass. Corn in tassel. Tomatoes warm from the garden. Chlorine and cocoa-butter and sunscreen. Lake water. Salt air. The fresh scent of rain after a late-afternoon thunderstorm.
By August, the land seems tired in a beautiful way. Roadsides are crowded with the last colors summer: creamy Queen Anne’s lace, blue chicory and purple thistle. Gardens have grown unruly. Naked ladies return between the faded blooms of the hydrangea. Leaves of the maples that were tender and bright in June have deepened beneath months of sun. Here and there, an orange leaf appears—a sure sign that autumn has left its calling card.
Tom Sawyer would have understood August. So would Huck Finn, the Little Rascals, and every child who ever felt a small sense of dread at the sight of school supplies appearing in store windows.
August is that final, glorious pause before responsibility returns—a reminder that life is not measured only by what we accomplish, but by what we remember. Perhaps that is why August lingers so vividly in our memories. Not because extraordinary things happened, but because ordinary moments seemed endless.
So before autumn arrives with its calendars, commitments, and cooler mornings, give yourself permission to enjoy this Sunday of Summer.
Open the windows.
Listen to the cicadas.
Take that long drive down a country road.
Because before you know it, another season will take its place and we will find ourselves longing for August all over again.