Summer's Last Hurrah

Labor Day Weekend. This is supposed to be it. Summer's End.

The season itself won't end until late this month, and the school kids summer ended a couple of weeks ago. And for those of us who work for a living, Summer really has no meaning anymore; its just a time when we pay air-conditioning bills instead of heating bills.

So why do we mourn the end of Summer? I suppose we can equate the seasons of the year with the ages of a mans life. Spring of course is the age of youth; of childhood. When any path is open and all things are possible. Spring gradually, almost imperceptibly, gives was to young adulthood- Summer.

By Summer the courses are clear, and hopefully well chosen. All things are in their prime We have the freedom and the ability to do as we please; the only constraints are time and money, yet both seem to be in vast supply. School is in the past; whether 12, 16 or 20 years worth, and the view forward seems limitless.

Fall arrives like the season; all at once and like a cold slap in the face. What once was easy is now difficult. Like the song says; it now takes all day to do what I once did all day. Things that were once beauty personified are now wilting and turning brown. The days begin cold and warm slowly, and sometimes don't warm at all. The trees, once so resplendent in all the shades of green, are now starting to show bare limbs, and pulling out their fall wardrobes of warm reds, oranges and yellows.

Fall is in someways a rewarding time of year. We are rewarded for our work in the garden all year with beans and corn; the fall colors are a visual delight; something looked forward to because of their varied and limited displays.

Fall in life is rewarding like that too. Careers are fully matured and usually offering rewards not given earlier. The children are grown and no longer your responsibility, and the only child-rearing you do is occasionally watching the grandkids. Grandkids, another fall reward. But we are not talking about the rewards of Fall; we're talking about the passing of Summer.

I think that we, who barely notice the end of Summer, really feel a need to commiserate with it's passing. We don't notice the change with a demarcated line, like the difference between Summer and School, but we feel the change; we smell it in the air; feel it in our bones. Summer is over, and Fall begins.

Then Winter sets in, all cold and miserable. But we don't want to talk about Winter today. Today is Summer.

At least for a few more days.