Labor Day Reflections

I have never liked Labor Day. Long weekends are great and I appreciate celebrating--as much a one does today--our workforce, so the concept is okay with me, too. It is the timing that is depressing.

Labor Day is the official end of summer. It reminds me that all that fun in the sun is over for another year. The reminder is particularly cruel considering tee shirt weather in south Carolina does not usually in until November. Even then, the sun teases every now and then. But fall does eventually come. The grass turns brown and the leaves die all while you are trapped in a school desk or office, helplessly watching it all slip away through a window.

It is all about renewal, of course. Nothing every really dies. It is all resting to be reborn in the spring, which is my favorite time of the year. Stil, it is difficult to keep all that in mind as you watch it fade.

Labor Day weekend used to be the last time my family visited our beach house every year. In spite o the weather still being summer like, the crowds of vacationers was always thinner than at any other time since the beginning of vacation season in Myrtle Beach. All of the college students who worked summer jobs were back in school, so most of the fun spots were closed down y then. Not nearly enough bikinis on the beach, either.

School had always started back for me at least two weeks prior to Labor Day. I recall a umber of times bringing textbooks with me because I had homework. Those Bob Jones ninnies ruined everything, no? In that sense, Labor Day was a brief dip in summer freedom with academia haunting and then a sudden jerk back to reality. What kid wants that, especially a Parrothead like me?

By high school, the beach house had been liquidated in my parents’ divorce. Labor day was just a brief respite from school right on up through law school save for that brief sojourn as a real estate agent when I could not tell the difference between it and any other day. That pretty much brings you up to date. Ain’t much changed ‘cept me since.

Have a happy what is left of Labor Day. Life requires moments of transition, so you might as well eoy them. Reflect on what has come before and hope for all that is yet to be…because that is all you really have.