As I walked my dog just after 7:00 am on the first cool enough morning to require a light sweatshirt, I was thinking about today being the Tuesday after Labor Day. Around here, it is mostly just another Tuesday as most of the schools have already been in full swing for two weeks. Maybe the traffic into the city is a bit heavier which might give the National Guard some action as some people return to more regular post-summer work schedules, but most of the families around here have already settled into their fall routine with schools, bagged lunches and homework.
The dog enjoyed a buffet of scent along our route, while I spaced out from a podcast thinking about the significance of this specific Tuesday in September. I believe in the seventies school began in Boston the day after Labor Day. The big excitement was tearing the tags off the new school outfits the night before and readying our shiny new lunch boxes. My most celebrated one was a metal Partridge Family rectangular box toting a bologna sandwich on white bread. Early Tuesday morning we would don our new digs, usually consisting of brown corduroy, and sweat our way through still summer like temperatures of the first day of school.
I was married on the Sunday of Labor Day, 9/1/91. On the Tuesday of that year I flew to Hawaii for my honeymoon, definitely the best post-Labor Day Tuesday ever! Another particular Labor Day sticks in my mind when, newly married and before kids, I went to the local Giant for weekly groceries. You would have thought a blizzard of two feet of snow had been predicted, there were lines all the way down the grocery store aisles. Carts filled with lunchables, juice boxes and goldfish were overflowing while I stood with my sandwich meat (no bologna!), salad fixings and a handful of yogurts. I learned my lesson and even when I began shopping for my dear offspring with goldfish in cart for school lunches, I never ever went on Labor Day Monday.
When my kids were in high school about ten years ago, Fairfax County still assigned summer homework (current parents of high-schoolers have been spared that nightmare). We are not talking finish a fun novel so you don't forget how to read during the summer. I packed Siddhartha and Watership Down into the sleepaway camp trunks only to unpack them four weeks later, not a page skimmed. Instead of Labor Day weekend being a celebration of the end of the summer, our kids were cramming heavy English literature and outlining several chapters of history or biology. One specific memory is of my son and his buddy, textbooks and papers spread all over my dining room table, working late into the night finishing up the AP World History chapters that were assigned in June. I didn’t fault them for procrastinating, the assignments were ridiculous! I just hated that they were already starting the school year with a sleep deficit.
If you are starting off today or knee deep into the throes of a new school year, I wish you a great Tuesday after Labor Day. I pray for no school violence, no more banned books, no ICE disruptions and joyful productive days. My kids would complain if other schools had a snow day and they had to go to school; I always said “180 days is 180 days no matter how you slice it”. Here’s to another 180 (give or take) and counting.