When I was a kid, one of the best things in the world to do in August was to position yourself on the edge of my great aunt and uncle’s lawn, with your bare feet touching Ninigret Avenue. Then, you take off down the gentle decline across their perfectly soft lawn until you hit the tiny postage stamp of sand before you were clattering onto the wooden dock taking you over John’s Pond. By the time you were at the beach, you were already at top speed and probably slowing down due to the changing terrain- but all the same you were doing your damnedest to propel yourself airborne and as far out as possible before splashing breathless into the water. Big smile on your face as you came up again to see how far you got.
More than anything else in the world, that is how I can best describe the feeling of summer this singular Mashpee kid. There was nothing better in the world, and summer was endless with sun, water and seeming autonomy as we roamed the neighborhood and general area of John’s Pond like rulers of our self-appointed dominion. The days went on and on like this until we were suddenly butting up against September. And then it was like your group had finally challenged the weight and integrity of your inner tube one too many times. It was deflated beyond use and now it’s time to go home.
Labor Day is a holiday that is celebrated on May 1st in Italy, and while I take issue with the term “celebrate” in this respect, I do find myself thinking that the North American version is better placed. The bridge between August and September deliberately puts you in slow motion, and in doing so it allows space for a bit of respect. Even if you don’t believe that last part to be true, the adult me at least find it to help make the whole end of summer/beginning of the dark months a bit easier to process.
Like back at home, Rome didn’t get a lot of rain this summer—but as a sign of the already changing season, things have slowly started to calibrate. Over the past week and into the weekend, we’ve seen sudden rain showers and lightning shows. Last night’s storm gave my Pink Floyd laser show viewing at the Boston Science Museum a run for its money. It was pretty, and for sure I appreciated the cooler temperatures—but at the same time, I really just kind of want to exist in the mid-weekend for more than just a blink of time. I say this because it’s a nice in-between space: summer activities have more or less wrapped up and none of us (if we’re lucky) are yet bound by all the engagements of autumn. It feels like there’s more of a possibility to just exist in the space.
As a kid I remember Labor Day being the most unpalatable holiday of the year. No more long jump competitions off the John’s Pond dock. Labor Day was useless to us because it technically fell in the summer vacation period, so it didn’t seem to serve any greater function than to send the remainder of the Cape Cod tourists home for the season. The only thing it seemed to be good for was rubbing in the fact that I’d have to return to school and weave myself into a social order that I never had much love for. To this day I still don’t understand the people who were excited to get up and go to school. Summer both as a kid as well as an adult is an infinitely better place to show up to.
So even though I am no longer going to school, I’m still not quite ready to upshift into the fall season. Adult living of course has its comparable share of crap to wade through, I already have a list of life admin things to attend to attend to. Like two weeks ago some human accelerated into the back of my parked car while she was trying to parallel park. I now need to get to the body shop and have that souvenir fixed while the whole experience is still fresh and interesting. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s just one example of something that adults find on their plates. And as everyone returns from their big summer pause, our plates will continue to become crowded with other stuff too.
Just as when we are kids, there is no choice but to continue forward into the end of the summer and face whatever is next. But at least as I’ve grown older, I have learned to appreciate the pause and dichotomy that comes with Labor Day weekend. Maybe it’s because I no longer have to go to school. And maybe it’s because I am lucky enough to carry around a sack of goods and bads where the goods tend to outweigh the bads inside.
As I write this, I am sitting outside and breaking into a bowl of pistachios as I sip a glass of tonic and gin from Calabria. Le zanzare, or mosquitoes as they are known back home, are still doing their best to feast on my legs as if they didn’t get the memo that summer was all but over. Like everything, you have to take the good with the bad.
And so gone are the days where you’re just a kid, running around like the world has no sense and nor does it need to have any. The eyes of an adult have seen too much, but even so they tend to realize that the more simple aspects of life offer gifts of their own. Like standing by the sea and watching a lightning storm as the clouds creep ever closer. Work might always be around the corner for us, but we never know how many more of these uncommon events we’ll get to witness. It’s the end of summer, and I appreciate all of the days I got, and this one weekend that I still have. Whatever will come will come. In this way I appreciate Labor Day and the complete pause in literal labor that it has managed to afford me.