I saw someone describe August as five o’clock on a Sunday, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it because it is such an oddly perfect description of the month.

Five o’clock on Sunday is still technically the weekend. There is still enough time to go somewhere, make dinner, sit outside, finish a book, or do absolutely nothing at all, but the day has already begun to feel borrowed. Monday has not arrived, and yet somehow you can feel its presence. I think August is like that because summer is still very much here, but you become aware of the fact that you are standing closer to the end of it than the beginning.

I don’t remember feeling that way about summer when I was a child. Back then, the season seemed enormous. June, July and August were not three little boxes on a calendar but one great stretch of time in which nothing important appeared to be required of us. You woke up and the day simply belonged to you. There were bikes lying in the grass, wet bathing suits hung over railings, popsicle wrappers stuck to your fingers, and evenings when nobody seemed particularly concerned with what time it was. I don’t remember wondering how many of those days were left.

Now I seem to count them without meaning to.

August makes this especially difficult because it is hardly a month that looks ready to leave. My garden is overflowing with tomatoes that took all summer to grow and are finally turning red. Hydrangeas are so heavy with flowers that their branches begin to lean toward the ground, and the farm stands are full of corn and peaches and little handwritten signs. Everything is abundant at precisely the moment you begin to understand that the abundance is temporary.

Perhaps that is what gives August its peculiar feeling. It is not quite sadness, because I love this time of year. If anything, I think I love it more because I am aware of it.

The other night I noticed that it was getting dark earlier, although only by a little, and I felt almost offended by it. I wanted to tell the sun that there was no need to hurry. We had only just gotten here.

I suppose this happens every year, and every year I behave as though I have been taken by surprise.

We seem to rush toward seasons before they arrive and then immediately become nostalgic for the one we are leaving. By the first truly hot week of summer, someone is already talking about autumn. The stores begin putting out notebooks and sweaters while people are still coming in wearing sandals. Pumpkins start to appear beside watermelons, which seems entirely unreasonable to me. I love autumn more than almost anything, but even I want to say, could we please finish August first?

Maybe adulthood is partly the realization that life does not wait for us to finish enjoying things.

That sounds more melancholy than I mean it to. I don’t think the answer is to become sad every time something lovely is ending. Like I always say, simply notice it while it is still here.

There are still warm evenings ahead. Plenty of tomatoes on the vine and peaches on the counter and dresses that won’t make sense a month from now. There is still time to sit outside after dinner even if the light disappears a little sooner than it did in July. August hasn’t left us yet.

Perhaps that is why the comparison to Sunday at five feels so true. There are still several good hours left, and it would be a shame to spend them thinking about Monday.

I’m trying to remember that.

Autumn