Call me crazy, but I don’t like Labor Day, and not just because I can’t wear white pants anymore.
I have always detested Labor Day ever since I was a child and the holiday signaled the dreaded back-to-school routine. Then, I think I disliked it even more as an adult and as the mother of young children who loved the pool and the beach and bikes and skates and popsicles.
I have even shed a tear on that day. I am not the mom who danced when the school bus arrived. We tried not to say the “s word” (school) all summer.
Even well into middle age, I still wish for long days filled with the windows rolled down, the music turned up and the cares carried away on the breeze.
Summer is possibilities. Trips. Reunions. Sand. Sunshine. Gardens. Days that stretch for hours and hours. Fresh, juicy fruit and Jersey tomatoes.
Labor Day, to me, signifies an end.
The onset of fall means heavy coats and snow shovels at the ready and darkness falling early.
The anxiety over the end of summer snuck up on me this year. Other worries crowded it out. Why was I so anxious? But wait, I recently realized it wasn’t the usual stressors. It is Labor Day. The younger daughter will pack to return to college. The older daughter will go back to teaching her class.
Maybe the pull in my heart is even more bittersweet in middle age.
The cliché of “Where does the time go?” hits home harder and more frequently. I cheat on the calendar. I schedule vacation in early fall, pretending the summer still stretches on, ignoring the march toward Halloween and all things autumn.
I wax philosophical and try to buoy my emotions by saying the fall (even its name is ghastly, who looks forward to a fall?) will bring new opportunities, new adventures. That lasts for a while.
But for now, I remain in denial. I will savor New Jersey sweet corn. I will sit on the porch more on the sultry summer evenings. I will not let my husband relegate those beach chairs to the shed, not yet. And the red-and-white striped beach bag is staying at the ready, just in case.
Donna Kenyon is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.