We all know what Labor Day means

Summer's done. Or is it?

Pretentious writing needs a suitably pretentious picture

It is fall now and we all know it. We will lie to ourselves on a hot day in early September - oh, feel that warm breeze, look at the great canopy of green and blue above! Yes, summer still abides. But no. It feels like summer lingers, but just wait. Fall is a house guest who shows up saying “don’t mind me, don’t change your routine, whatever you want to do, fine by me!” And in three weeks it’s moving the furniture around, choosing new drapes, painting the living room. The house of summer may stand until the 21st, but the squatter is already inside, and forging his name on the title.

I ran across an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote the other day: ““Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” It’s a sentiment you have to be young to believe - but you’re never too old to doubt it. The line is from Gatsby, and you can imagine the glittering young things sitting in a the humid torpor of a Long Island mansion on an indolent August day,  complaining about the heat. The exact context:

“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?

“Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

“But it’s so hot,” insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, “and everything’s so confused. Let’s all go to town!”

Oh, that’s your answer for everything, Daisy. Drive to down and get pixillated at the Ritz, barf in the fountain for mad thrills.

Jordan may be bored and a bit annoyed, but he’s right. If you’re young, yes: fall starts everything up. Turns the key. It’s the return to the rules and routines, the sudden sense of purpose that a new school year brings. The excitement of seeing new and old; the nervous doubts about where you will sit and by whom; the smells of the freshly-shaved pencils and the warm radiators. The loose and friendly embrace of a favorite sweater. Apples and woodsmoke.

All the cliches.

These long-banked embers lose their glow as you age, only to be rekindled when you have kids. Then you experience them all again, watching the traditions braid a rope of smoke that your child will never see, but will feel tug at their heart on the first bright autumn day when the leaves show hints of the imminent hues.

Here in Minnesota we have the Fair to tell us when summer’s over. Labor Day:  ta-da, fireworks, show’s over. The Fair is  the summation of the entire season -  the first days hot and dry, the last ending cool and damp. The entirety of the season was wrapped up in those twelve days, and it seems greedy to ask for more.

But of course we do just that. And why shouldn’t we? Nothing changed. The calendar is just a bunch of sticks we arrange over the turning earth. What’s the difference between 08/31 and 09/01?  The calendar speaks truth, though. Something has changed.

Summer is when you know for certain that tomorrow will be summer, too. We no longer have that assurance.

Fall is when you know for certain that summer is gone for good. You bask in the wan light, marvel at the new beauty, smile at the prospect of a warm Halloween, all the time newly reminded of the brutal truths to come. As much as we love it, Fall loses interest in our company, moves out in the night,  and leave behind an empty house. Not yet, though! Not yet. That’s the marvelous quality of Labor day. It’s all over tomorrow, perhaps. But not today.

Tomorrow, by the way, is when you should book your flight to get out of here in January. As Daisy might say, it’s too depressing. Let’s all go to Cancun.