Standing at August’s Threshold: End-of-Summer Reflections

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It’s August, already!

This month catches me off guard. Impossible that we are already past the year’s midpoint. I can feel the earth teetering on its axis, giving us a balancing act before tipping into fall’s shorter days and cooler nights. It stirs up a cornucopia of melancholy and anticipation, memory and hope. As though the fall is a doorway and August the threshold to change.

For months I’ve been head-down in writing, giving book talks and marketing my book Saving Vincent. August is reminding me to pause, breathe deeper.

Slow down.

To help me linger, I’ve turned to a few literary pros (and a lyricist) who understood the weight of thresholds, matching their words to my own remembrances.

"The first week of August is motionless, hot. It is at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it stops in its turning." Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt (1975)

As a kid (OK, now too) my hands-down terrifyingly favorite carnival ride was the open-air Ferris wheel. Every August, traveling county fairs would cross Illinois, setting up rides in empty fields. Inevitably, I would abruptly lose my nerve and so would plead and bribe and negotiate hard with whoever sat with me—sister, BFF, brothers—not to rock the bucket. My throat was always gloriously hoarse by the end of the ride.

"The August rain, which for days has been falling on the roof, has made this an odd, uneven time. It is a time between summer and autumn." The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Path (2000)

Little smarty-pants me looked forward to back-to-school un-scuffed shoes, bright backpacks, notebooks with empty clean pages. I’ve always loved the do-over, fresh start promise of the fall. And so, August is a toss-up between clinging to the past, leaning toward the future. I pressed open the pages of a new journal this week and caught a little whiff of this “odd, uneven time.”

“In August, the large, heavy, ripening berries bend down the twigs, and the bushes are weighed down with fruit.” The Journals of Henry David Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau (published posthumously in 1906)

Raspberry jam, raspberry pie, raspberry cake, raspberry pavlova*. After I graduated from my Illinois college and moved to the Big City (St. Louis), my educator parents (dad taught at a university; mom at a grade school), moved to a 9-acre plot off of Cemetery Road. Once they’d built the house, they filled remaining acreage with rows of raspberries. Visits home on weekends meant I had to earn the homemade raspberry syrup on my pancakes by picking berries early. Dad made hands-free make-shift buckets to capture the ripe berries with sawed-off plastic ice-cream gallon jugs. He added a cord so it could hang around the picker’s neck. With both hands free—one to gingerly pull away the thorny branches, the other to pluck off the berries—my task was to fill the gallon jug. Out early before the sun’s heat beat too intensely, dew dampening my sneakers, the buzz of insects gradually rising: I carry a sensory memory that revisits my August mornings still.

“Summer lovin’,/ Had me a blast / Summer lovin’ / happened so fast” Grease “Summer Nights” (1978)

Summer before my senior year in high school I met a guy who had a red convertible (be still, my heart), played bass in a rock band (oh my heart’s sped up!), and could kiss like he meant it. Yes, he broke up with me and I moved on to other loves (especially the forty-year adventure I’m currently on), but that dreamy threshold into first love stays sweet.

Standing at this threshold once again, I feel the familiar pull between what was and what’s to come. August may be slipping through our fingers, but there is comfort in the doorway: Newness is coming.

I hope you slow down a bit,

*Raspberry pavlova recipe below!

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(Captions are left to right)

1. I connected with intrepid Illinois lifelong learners when I gave my talk, “The Van Gogh Entrepreneur: Building a Billion-dollar Legacy from Nothing,” at the St. Louis Oasis Lifelong Learning program.

2. Tucked into a reading nook at my local library to read with my niece and her cool kids.

3. Delighted to find out Saving Vincent is a finalist in the 2026 Missouri Writers Guild contest for the Walter Williams Award (high-quality published work characterized by literary merit or extensive research).

4. Joined the local Gamma Phi Beta Book Club for a fabulous evening of sharing stories and friendship.

   Book Review: Pie Espionage and Wit in WWII

See author Annie Barrows’ website

Charming, witty – I want to hang out with these characters

A classic: My neighborhood book club read, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows). The book’s title hints at its charming style. You guess it will be a playful; you find out it’s inventive. The story is told through a series of letters, which makes it all the more impressive how the authors paint background and context and character cleverly all through the voices of the letters. The story takes place just after WWII in which a London writer, Juliet, begins a correspondence with members of the society, people who lived through the German occupation of their Channel island. Eccentric and kind, the characters radiate wit even as they depict the hardship and sadness they lived through. This is one of those small classics. Wonderful book, especially if you’re looking for a witty page-turner.

Plus: The book was made into a movie in 2018.

One of my favorite desserts to serve friends. This easy to prepare, elegant dessert looks especially pretty in a clear glass trifle bowl. (Serves 6)

4 egg whites

8 oz. fine dessert sugar

1/2 T cornstarch

1/4 t. vanilla

1 t. cider vinegar

1 lb. raspberries (set aside a few for garnish)

1/2 pint whipping cream

Lightly grease and line a 8x8 baking pan with waxed paper. Whisk egg whites until nearly stiff. Add sugar 1 T at a time, whisking in between, until whites are firm and glossy (you can use a mixer with a whisk/whip attachment for this). Using a large metal spoon, fold in cornstarch, vanilla and vinegar. Spread meringue over wax paper. Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 5 minutes—then turn down oven to 250-degrees and bake 1 hour. Take out and cool in pan for 2-3 hours.

Meanwhile, select 6 or so perfect berries for garnish. Simmer the rest over low heat to soften the berries. Sweeten with sugar to taste.

Whip the cream.

Break the meringue just before serving. Layer meringue, berries, cream, etc, ending with whipped cream on top. Add berries as garnish. The combination of sweet meringue, tart berries and cream is a yummy celebration for end of summer!