My drafts folder is stuffed right now; stuffed, I tell you. I pulled out a draft and started to polish it a bit, thinking that I’d finish and publish it. But it’s missing something. So I’ll write instead about Labor Day weekend, which it is right now as of about 20 minutes ago (it’s 5:20 on Friday afternoon). Did I ever mention that I hate LDW? Well, I do. LDW is the end of summer and the beginning of pumpkin spice latte and stupid NFL football and the downward slide toward winter. LDW can go fuck itself.
I wouldn’t normally be cooking on the Friday of LDW, but I am. I’m making a nice Nicoise salad, with salmon rather than tuna. I cooked the potatoes, and blanched the green beans, and broiled some salmon, and cut up some tomatoes. Now I just have to assemble the whole thing. I also cooked a take and bake pizza for any members of the household who don’t want salad. I even cut up some fruit. It should be a nice summer dinner, suitable for our people-coming-and-going summer routine.
*****
It turned out to be a rather nice evening. I sat at the pool for a bit with some friends. Both the water and the air were early autumn cold. I wore a hoodie and draped a towel across my legs and we watched as a handful of kids inched their way into the icy water. When even kids aren’t jumping right in, you know that the water is cold. When even I am sitting in a deck chair rather than swimming laps, then you know that the water is cold. It was Baltic, I tell you. Baltic.
And my son came home for the weekend, which was lovely. He arrived at 11 PM or so, and then I stayed up watching TV for a bit with my husband and both boys - only until midnight, but it was nice going to bed knowing that the rest of the family were just a few rooms away. It’s Saturday morning now, and I’ll make breakfast for anyone who’s awake in the next few minutes. You have to get up early in the morning if you want breakfast around here. It’s not a restaurant, know what I mean?
*****
Saturday of LDW was kind of an ideal summer weekend day, making summer’s imminent end even sadder than it usually is. That is the most pitiful glass-half-empty-and-quickly-draining sentence, but that’s where my head is right now. All I do around here is keep it real.
It took an act of will to immerse my entire body in the still-very-chilly water but with the temperature quite a bit warmer than it had been on Friday and the mid-afternoon sun sparkling on the water’s surface, the chill felt refreshing. I never really warmed up even after a solid lap swim at a pretty brisk (for me) pace, but I didn’t mind. The deck was warm and sunny and it was lovely to sit there after the cold swim, wrapped in a towel and watching as others approached the water, slowly and gingerly. Good luck with that, I thought, as the sun dried my hair and the feeling returned to my extremities.
*****
Saturday of LDW feels like the first day of a little vacation. Sunday of LDW feels like the beginning of the end, and I’m very sad this morning. I should probably do something about the fact that I am crying every day, often more than once a day, but I probably won’t. I’ll probably just ignore this mental health crisis until it goes away, exactly as I do with every other thing that’s wrong with me, real or imagined.
*****
It’s Monday now, Labor Day itself. I went to a party of sorts last night. A fellow Rockville swim mom, whose son was one of the four seniors on Rockville’s state championship squad, invited a bunch of women to her house for drinks and snacks. All of the guests had just recently sent a child off to college - some are younger mothers whose oldest children just graduated from high school, and some are older mothers sending their last children off.
Going to a party, even a low-key, come-as-you-are party, was really the last thing I wanted to do, but I went because I like the hostess very much and because I should get out of the house more. And it was a lovely evening, and I’m glad I went. I had one drink that I didn’t finish, because my night driving is bad enough without adding alcohol to the mix, but the rest of the group, who all live within walking distance, were throwing back Moscow Mules and Dark and Stormys with abandon. I was one of the few completely sober people in that crowd, and it was OK. It was nice to be with people who understand.
*****
The nice thing about having your kid home for the weekend is that he’s home for the weekend. But the bad thing of course is that he has to return to school and then you have to endure the separation again. It’s Tuesday now and LDW passed as quickly as it always does. It’s like a little mini summer in itself; long anticipated (by the people who actually like Labor Day weekend) and then over in a flash.
We spent most of the day at the pool. Labor Day is amateur night - everyone in the neighborhood shows up. Even if they haven’t made a single appearance at the pool all season long, people consider the summer wasted if they haven’t been to the pool at least once. It was the usual crazy Labor Day scene; pizza lunches and potluck dinners in the pavilion, frantic games of beaver and Marco Polo and knockout and sharks and minnows and water polo; balls flying through the air left and right. The lane ropes were gone by 6:30, and the pool was just a big open tub of splashing kids wringing out the last bit of summer fun. At 7:45 PM, there were at least 75 people in the water, and more people just kept jumping in ahead of the last whistle of the night and of the season. At 8 o’clock, seeing the head lifeguard about to blow the whistle, the children begged “Please? Just a few minutes?” And the head lifeguard, a grown-up pool kid himself, gave them 15 more minutes. Spontaneous applause - for a great summer and a kindhearted lifeguard - broke out when the whistle finally blew. It was dark at 8:15, and no matter what the meteorological calendar says, the summer was over.
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