August has become my favorite month of the year. The boisterous, humid days of July begin to settle down, but summer is still going strong. The near-end of summer means sunflowers in bloom, twilight falling just a bit earlier, and a well-rehearsed symphony of insects playing while the orange glow of sunset still lingers in the sky. Corn in the nearby fields is taller than I am. August is warm. There’s no need to put away swimsuits and refillable water balloons. Fall is just over the horizon, but summer isn’t finished with us yet.

For four years, August meant moving myself out of my parents’ house and into a dorm room. I dreaded that first move into college life. It meant a move away from my family, my home, and a rhythm of life that was familiar. It meant my friends and I had spent four years together only to go our separate ways and keep in touch mostly through social media. It meant my high school sweetheart and I had to become a long-distance couple.

It was a beautiful, warm Saturday in August when we got married. Short, strapless bridesmaids’ dresses were in style, and mine were light blue. The flowers in the bouquets and on the tables were vibrant purples, yellows, oranges, and whites. Seashells I had collected in Maine were featured in the centerpieces. I wore my mom’s veil and a dress with a lace train. The guys were in black tuxes. Our reception venue—an old train station—had high ceilings and lots of natural light, and we hired a live jazz band instead of a DJ. We took a honeymoon to Maine. We collected more seashells. We sat on the beach after sunset and watched shooting stars (from the annual Perseid meteor shower) dash across the sky.

By the following August, I had been laid off from two jobs, started a third (which was finally the place I was meant to be,) and my husband had decided to go back to school for a computer science degree. I made him stand next to our front door with his backpack for a back-to-school picture before his first day. It was four Augusts later when he started his new career as a software engineer. I stopped taking birth control the same week.

In August 2020, our pandemic baby was born just after midnight a week before our sixth wedding anniversary. I became a mom, and my husband became a dad. The nurse placed our newborn son, wearing only a diaper and a hospital beanie, on my chest. He pushed with his little feet to scoot himself up closer to me before curling up under my chin. My husband felt our baby’s tender skin and remarked, “He’s so soft.” Our son was warm, and healthy, and perfect. I decided not to think about how long the doctor had spent stitching me up.

It was that same August when my husband became a cancer survivor. He received his diagnosis on a Friday. On Sunday, our precious baby boy was three weeks old and my husband was going in for surgery the following morning. The sunlight in our yard that evening was golden. It had the perfect late-summer glow, so I took our little family to the backyard for a quick family picture. I posted it on social media with the caption, “Three weeks as a family of three!” and didn’t mention I had taken it thinking it could be the last picture of us before everything changed. On Monday morning, the last day of August, my husband underwent a successful surgery. He was, and still is, cancer-free. Every August I’m thankful for his health, for our family, and that his cancer journey has been relatively minor.

This year is our first August as a family of four. My husband and I will celebrate 9 years of marriage. This could be the month our daughter learns to walk. It’s the month our son turns three (and hopefully leaves the worst of the terrible twos behind.) Next year he’ll start preschool, and we’ll enter the phase of life when every August is full of back-to-school preparations.

The mature, steady warmth of August is the perfect denouement to summer. It’s hard to know if I love this month more for the summer weather, late-blooming flowers, and ripening crops, or for what it has come to mean to me. The sun is setting on summertime, but before I skip ahead to what’s coming next, I think I’ll sit here and enjoy the view.