If I were to ask someone under the age of thirty to tell me about Labor Day I would not be surprised if they began talking about childbirth. If someone was to ask me about Labor Day I would start with, “ It’s a shared holiday, with the day off when we do something fun to close summer, and let me see…it has to do with labor unions. Right?”
In ‘the North’ summer was very neatly sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day. School started after Labor Day and Labor Day marked the close of summer. Distinctions were clear. Right. Wrong. Summer. Seasons. Marriage. Similar to cataracts, boundaries are now hazy. How did the fuzzy get into everything? The progressive decades from childhood to senior-hood are accompanied by a boundary blur. When I lived in Florida it was hot until December, making it hard to maintain the tradition of Labor Day’s close to the summer season.
Growing up in New York, we welcomed fall and the aroma of leaves being burned,(you read that right) apples, light jackets and most importantly back to school. Nothing was as predictable as fall and the start of school. Remember school? That was once a place where children went for six hours a day ten months of the year. Parents sent their children to school and thought nothing more about it. We have come a long way. Many of my friends home schooled their children. That’s a big step. A huge commitment. When people complained during Covid because their children were at home, I tried to balance their complaints with the reality that a multitude of mothers keep their children home and ‘home school’ them.
I remember when school was from nine to three, not seven-thirty to …when? I am told that the bus schedule has something to do with the change in hours but good grief, getting more buses should be a top priority. I recently heard of a community where parents wait in line for two hours to pick up their children at the car pick up. Common sense tells me that something is off. I am starting to sound like the stereotype Granny who ‘walked four miles in the snow to school.’ But the truth is when I went to school we did walk and it was close to a mile. No one thought anything about it.
School was okay and my friends and I didn’t give it a second thought. School was a fact of life. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and school. Who questioned it? It is true that I had to be dragged crying into my first-grade classroom, but by the time I was a senior I walked in on my own.
Lunch boxes, back packs, school buses …grab a sweater - it’s fall and I’m smiling.
Comentários