You can hear them before you see them. The low rumble, the distinctive brakes. A fleet of yellow school buses, coming soon (in less than an hour, in fact) to a corner near us.

This is the first year in 17 that we’ve not had a child climbing on a big yellow school bus. Celia will drive to high school today.

For many years the bus stop was a carnival on the first day of school. Parents with cameras, kids with new shoes and backpacks bigger than they were. We would take a couple of hours off work, chat with our neighbors, snap pictures, then walk slowly back to a newly empty house.

I worked solely at home in those days and would relish the quiet house after a summer full of kids. Now I ride downtown to an office three days a week, and my primary emotion at the end of summer isn’t relief but melancholy. Summers pass too quickly — as do winters, springs and falls.

Photo: Freefoto.com