I spoke to my parents last night for the first time in over three weeks. That has to be the longest I've ever gone without speaking to them. It was even weirder, though, because we were having some e-mail problems, so they didn't have an e-mail or anything from me for the first two of those weeks!
It wasn't until speaking to them that I realized that this was Labor Day Weekend. You know how that is, when you're that far removed it's not even in your scope of vision, not on the radar.
Take Patriot Day. Well, not the new September 11th one but the April one, the day that they run the Boston Marathon. I mean, that's a big holiday in New England. It's crazy-huge in Boston. But in the rest of the world? Nothing. Maybe a fifteen second clip of the Marathon winner on the 6 pm news. But that's it.
I mean, I should have figured it out that today was Labor Day - it is the first Monday in September, that's a pretty big clue right there. But everything is so topsy-turvy here, it's still a hundred-something degrees out, and I'm not working, so it just doesn't register. The days all kind of meld together.
Labor Day was always an interesting holiday growing up, back in Maine. It used to be the busiest holiday for my family, at least for a few years. See, my parents were both schoolteachers when I was younger. But in the summer they owned and ran a lobster restaurant. (Yes, how typical, almost cliched, Maine.)
Since school started the week before Labor Day weekend, the restaurant would close Monday through Thursday of that week. My parents couldn't teach school and run a restaurant at the same time. But on Friday we'd start back up at the restaurant, for three final days. And what a busy weekend that always was. Like everyone in Massachusetts and New York wanted one more piece of summer in Maine, and they all came to our town.
Then on Sunday night we'd close for the summer, and immediately start cleaning, winterizing, packing up shop. When I was younger (before I was old enough to start working there, as well as my first few years) the cleanup would continue into Monday.
It was always odd to me, especially as a small child, to see the restaurant on Monday. Everything was suddenly shuttered and sealed tight. What the night before was lit up and vibrant was now almost abandoned looking.
And somehow it always seemed like that Monday was cloudy. Always cloudy. Every year. As if the entire town's energy had been spent entertaining the guests from away for the whole summer, and there wasn't enough juice left for one more day of sun.
But once I was college-age the whole ordeal got infinitely more tricky. See, I had to be back to Boston on that Monday.
So now we packed up the entire restaurant on Sunday night late into the night, and Monday, which had always been a quiet day, was now spent packing and shuffling me off to school.
Luckily my folks sold the restaurant after my brother finished college, over ten years ago. Now they spend Labor Day weekends relaxing at their cottage on a little lake.
For the last two years we've had Labor Day parties at the cottage. Invited all of the little kids in our family - we have a wide swarth of cousins aged 3 to 13. They're all great fun to boat and swim with. It's like one final party of the summer, and best of all, it's quite relaxing.
There's always a moment or two, though, where my dad will mention cleaning up at the restaurant, or braving all of the traffic down to Boston to deliver me to college.
I forgot to ask my parents last night if they were doing a party today. Probably not, this summer was pretty hectic getting ready for this big party we had on August 5th. And the week after that was spent packing to shuffle us off to Dubai.
I kind of wish I was boating and swimming with my little cousins today, though.
