The call from Eliza came early Saturday morning. Her first week of first grade behind her, she was anxious to share the excitement. A lovely way to start a day, the chatty conversation with a granddaughter led to familiar mid August yearnings not felt in recent years.

Thinking I had grown out of the restlessness that always settled into the household in mid August after the children were grown, I found instead the memories creeping back ever so slowly &045; the start of a new school term and all the preparations that used to lie before us then.

Seasons change in meaning as children grow up and go away, and each has its bittersweet emptiness. Summertime always is a poignant time of year without them &045; no squealing laughter as one sprays another with a hose, no jars filled with lightning bugs and no plastic pool where the dog jumps in, too, to blow bubbles in the shallow water.

In wintertime, soups and stews sit around longer in the refrigerator and the last of the cornbread gets stale before the diminished family can get to it all. The rug inside the back door remains drier from the absence of little boots and umbrellas, and schoolbooks no longer clutter the kitchen table late into a windy January night.

Springtime wonders now are topics shared by letter, e-mail and telephone with children and with grandchildren &045; the first buds on the azaleas and dogwoods and the first nest of wrens. Fewer purple iris blooms are cut and brought into the house and too seldom does anyone pick a dandelion to blow away its feathery head and make a wish.

Life goes on, changes and all, and other good things replace the void, where joys, laughter and tears of children once dominated every season.

Still, mid August evokes memories of togetherness and shared excitement even today, as now it is the children’s children at the center of all the newness of a school year. And they all are far away.

This weekend, a trip to the back-to-school department of a large store would be a satisfying thing to do &045; to browse through spiral notebooks, boxes of shiny yellow pencils with fresh erasers and packages of crisp ruled paper in cellophane wrappers.

One year, the urgency of a mid August with no school preparations to make prompted a trip to the grocery store to buy a snack that always was a hit in a lunch box or at a tea party after school.

&8220;What is this?&8221; my husband asked as he helped unpack the groceries that day. &8220;Date nut bread,&8221; I answered in a casual tone. &8220;You put cream cheese on it.&8221;

Being one who had missed many of the finer points of finger foods, he was baffled by the combination. Quickly I opened the can, sliced the bread and spread a round with the soft cheese. Delicious, it satisfied a need.

Reacting to mid August can be a good thing. While Eliza, her brother, her cousins and all their parents bustle about during this busy month of starting another school year, at least I can clean closets, sew buttons on coats and air out the wool sweaters.

Besides, no one will notice if I stroll through the aisle where book bags and lunch boxes fill the shelves. And I could use a new spiral notebook.

Joan Gandy

is community editor of The Democrat. She can be reached at 445-3549 or by e-mail at

joan.gandy@natchezdemocrat.com

.