It’s Sunday. Sunday’s lovely. The children and parents alike are in their pajamas still. Work never really stops for such as I, but there is an extra portion of downtime built into the day.

There is a period between Labor Day and Columbus Day when Cape Cod is literally perfect. The sunshine still has the power to warm your bones properly, but never hits you like a hammer as it does in August. The flowers still bloom. The sun doesn’t get as high in the sky, and so the flat, washed out effect of the midday is tempered into a kind of vibrant illumination only. The mosquitoes are losing interest.

The tourists have fled. Park on the street. The shopkeepers are glad to see you again. The ocean has reached its benificent peak, before its long languid slide to icewater. The weather has turned, and all the haze has fallen out of the sky to linger above the grass in the long morning, or hangs in the twilight like the smoke from a million elves’ chimneys.

The tree branch will hang over my bairn as he waits for the bus tomorrow, the leaves tinged with red and yellow, reminding me that the year, and the boy, is slipping away down the calendar. Let us linger in it all today.