By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

It’s been where summer occurred. That room, actually the room and area outside. Board games, boredom complaints, quiet morning teas and coffee with the spur of the moment banana breads made from the nasty brown one in the big fruit bowl centerpiece catch all spot for keys and coupons.

The thick maroon curtains across the sliding glass doors did a good job when the western sinking sun streamed scorching in late July.

Now this place will be homework central or at least homework planning central, mail room, calendar spreading and synchronization, meals in haste before practice, rehearsal, study session, meetings, and library visits. The sun’s pattern moves a bit lower and south making the curtains more decorative, tied back. All the sun available shining inside will come welcomed.

It’s just that this particular day, this Monday, feels like transition despite the fact that my last sinking feeling ride back to school, skin still smoldering from the previous day at the beach, was in the Fall of 1974. But thirty five years cannot dull the mixed aches of anticipation, for gut centered moments of shift like that stay with you forever. They must.

Seasonal cycles are not just for trees like the city rooted ones outside my window, changing color already. People have seasonal shifts too and sensing that helps one be gentle with people this time of year. Calendars getting filled quickly, a sudden realization that this is the year to start or the last year of something, or that particular year when time will tell about how to approach the next year, or maybe this is the mark of a real year because the last one felt confused and shaky.

January should be the month of reassessment and dieting, not the beginning of the year. This is the beginning, this night before school really starts, the week before football season really gets serious, when co-workers come to work refreshed and lethargic from summer vacation or not. Leaves drop and sweaters need un-boxing this week, to breathe.