When I was a kid, August meant coming home. My parents were divorced when I was very young, and due to the whole custody thing, I spent every summer in South Dakota on my dad's farm, whereas I lived with my mom through the school year in Missouri. And I loved coming home to Missouri in August.
Summers were fun - hanging out with my brothers, driving the pickup through ditches, watching the flax fields burst open with color as the sun came up, eating brand new wheat kernels as they spewed from the combine into the back of the truck - flicking nasty grasshoppers with their sticky legs off of me as they flew around that truck...I could possibly devote an entire blog to the awesomeness that was summer-life on a farm for a kid. At least for me.
But returning to Missouri, with the heaviness of humidity in the air, the sonic rhythm of cicadas in the trees, the sound of cars busily passing on the city streets outside my open upstairs bedroom window...those are sweet, sweet memories, as well. Memories of coming home in August.
The cicadas are singing in the trees again. The humidity is oppressive. And we're heading home - at least into the home stretch. The final days of summer.
Nowadays August means paper chains counting down the final days before school, inventorying school supplies, replacing thread-bare tennis shoes with new Skechers, deciding whether or not to buy jeans now or to wait for the fall growth spurt. It's all a matter of coming home. Bringing the girls' beds back upstairs, settling in to earlier bedtimes, finalizing swim lessons and baseball games.
We're in the home stretch. And it feels like home.
It feels like August.
