Summer is so over.
Even if the temperatures continue to hover in the eighties and even though the Autumn equinox doesn’t arrive until September 22, you and I both know when we talk about summer now it’s in the terms of “next.”
This occurs because in 1894 the United States designated the first Monday in September to honor the American worker. Labor Day was supposed to be a day of parades and speeches that recognized the contributions and sacrifices of workers, but its placement on the calendar imbued it with even more importance. It is the day that delineates between the end of summer fun and the beginning of school/work drudgery. (Thank you to the retail industry for softening the blow a teensy bit.)
It places powerful demands on us. Such as:
You have to stop wearing white. Okay, you don’t have to, but I do. It’s been ingrained in me since I was old enough to actually care what I wore to school.
You have to stop cutting vegetables for gazpacho and start slicing store-bought root vegetables for hot soup. Again, you can eat cold soup now that Labor Day has passed, but I can’t. (And I assure you that this has nothing to do with my pathetic homegrown crop of tomatoes. Or should I say tomato?).
You have to rip out those pastel pink impatiens and begonias just when they’ve filled out and look gorgeous, and replace them with mums. Again, you don’t have to, but I do. Pink annuals clash with the mums’ rich earthy tones of rust and orange.
Every year I tell myself I will throw caution to the wind and treat Labor Day solely for the purpose our forefathers had intended. I WILL wear white. I WILL eat cold soup. I WILL let my pretty annuals be killed off by the first frost and not die by my hand.
I WILL.
Right after I break the lock on my swim club’s chain link fence and take a quick dip. Who shuts down a pool when it’s still 85 degrees?
