Wake up. It’s August. What will you do with the rest of your pandemic summer?

August? It’s August?

You look at the calendar and feel sideswiped. The word August slams into your brain like a truck that lurched around a blind corner and knocked you over. Where did August come from?

August is the last full month of summer, the month that always raises questions.

What have you done with your summertime? What will you do with what’s left? Wake. Up.

Even in a normal summer — which this is not — August stirs those existential thoughts. Except for the freakish subset of people who are happy to see summer go, the ones who begin moaning in May that it’s too hot, summer always seems to end too soon, at least here in Chicago where snow can arrive in October.

Technically, I know, we haven’t even arrived at summer’s midpoint yet, but experience tells us otherwise. We’re wired to think of summer on a school calendar. And history warns us that August is the month when, out of the blue, a sharper breeze blows in from the lake and the infinite days grow suddenly shorter, as if an unseen hand is lowering a shade.

Most summers, one thing we summer lovers love about the season is its familiarity. We know the days will get long and warm, the grass will grow high and, if we’re lucky, we’ll go places.

This summer, a pandemic has turned summertime, like all time, upside down. The grass still grows, but some beaches are closed, airports are cesspools, a restaurant patio is a calculated risk.

And, oddly, that hasn’t been all bad.

Way back in June, I got an email from a Chicago Tribune reader named Katy. It popped into my mind the other day when I noticed August on the calendar.

“This summer,” Katy had written, “I recalled a column you wrote about keeping a stack of index cards to note summery things you did each day. I always loved the idea. This June, I started a notebook with a few lines for each day. Since we are all staying home more, I have been paying attention to little things that make summer the best time of the year.

“During past summers, I didn’t appreciate the little things as much because there was always a pull to do BIG things — festivals, concerts, trips, etc. Now that so many of those activities are canceled, I really appreciate a cup of coffee on the porch or a cool morning to water the flowers.”

Rereading Katy’s email, I thought about how perfectly she had characterized this summer with the virus lurking: This is the summer of little things.

I know a few people who have taken road trips, but most people I know have constructed a summer out of slower, simpler acts. No tickets, no reservations, no luggage.

When we look back at this time, we’ll remember little things. Like the eerie quiet of early summer when the world was still shut down. And the sirens in the distance when the protests came. And how quiet it was again when the protests died down, and how the noise picked back up when the bars and restaurants, with restrictions, opened up again.

If I’d thought to write down each day’s summer pleasures, those things would be on it. So would coffee outside in the morning. Long walks in the evening, noticing streets I’d walked a thousand times but somehow never seen in detail. More conversation with neighbors than I’ve ever had because everyone is outside more in search of somewhere to go.

Katy’s email prompted me to fish out the index cards I kept in that distant, more ordinary summer, one card for every day. I was struck that even though they contained details of trips — Oregon, California — most of them, even then, were full of small pleasures — sitting on the roof, eating outdoors, walking by the lake.

And then there was the last one, on which I’d scrawled this:

“The last day of summer. At dusk took a walk and tried in vain to get a good photo of the sunset. Reading my summer cards I realize it was a beautiful, full summer in ways I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t written it down.”

Reading that card I remembered there are three reasons to write down your summer pleasures. One is to nudge yourself to find them. The other is to notice them more carefully when you do. The third is that in looking back you’ll see how all those days added up to something full.

So I’ve dug out a short stack of index cards for August 2020, to record what remains of the summer of little things. Maybe you’ll do the same.