The Tunnel At The End Of The Light

By Dan Brosgol

Last week I was driving in the car when a wave of feeling washed over me.

Fall is coming.

In the moment, it didn’t make much sense—after all, it was sunny and warm, I was wearing shorts, and it was still early August. But the combination of dry air, football talk on the radio, and things I was doing at work all combined to produce this massive sensation of . . .September.

That’s not entirely bad, as I love leaves, apples, and cool weather. But it is definitely a little sad, as it meant that summer was entering the home stretch.

This week has only reinforced that feeling. Summer baseball came to a thrilling end, club soccer pre-season workouts are underway, Springs Brook Park went to its late-summer schedule, and there’s more talk about the Patriots’ backup quarterback position than there is about the underachieving Red Sox. It also happens to coincide with the fact that everyone seems to be on vacation this week—Starbucks on Great Road was deathly quiet and empty the other morning at 11:00, the Loomis Street/South Road traffic light has had minimal backups in late afternoon, and even Route 2 at the Concord Rotary wasn’t bad yesterday.

Beyond the business and traffic of late summer, back-to-school action has certainly picked up. We made the increasingly cumbersome Staples trip; have the Kindergarten bus run and popsicle play dates on the calendar; got the middle school mailing, and are just waiting for the fall soccer rosters to come to really get into planning mode.

With Labor Day on the horizon, we’ll hold on to summer as long as possible, and hopefully carve out a four-day mini-vacation when there’s nothing on the calendar. But that light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and brighter.

Or, more appropriately, that tunnel at the end of the light is coming up fast. Better go out and live a little before we start the 6:45 wake-ups in a few weeks.