It's a bittersweet time of both nostalgia and new possibilities. Patches of gold or red leaves sway in the breeze here and there.
Drivers turn over the cold engines of their school buses.
Football teams anxiously run through their scrimmages for that first game. And everywhere in the malls is the sound of whining. Not just any whining. I remember them long ago, going with my mom to replace the clothes I'd outgrown or worn out since the last school year. They were interminable trips made all the more cruel by the realization that I was spending these precious moments of the waning summer shopping for clothes that I'd only need when the summer was truly gone.