We’ve been away from the blog keyboard for over a month now, and a good friend asked us this evening why we weren’t blogging lately.
After thinking about it some, it was clear that it was time to sit down and get “back in the game”.
Appropriately just in time for football season, no less. But no easier, all the same.
Labor Day represents the traditional end of summer for most of us, even if the calendar waits a few more weeks to make the official designation that fall has arrived. But the cooler evening temperatures ?here in New England on this first weekend in September, have clearly signaled that the end of summer is bearing down upon us.
And it seems more bittersweet this year, than most.
It started with the pair of graduations back in the spring. The older daughter surpassing her father by graduating from college in May with her Bachelor of Science degree. She’ll continue to outshine her old man, as she begins her grad school years this month working on a five year plan towards a PhD.
In Psychology, with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience, no less.
Plus she got a fellowship, and is a teaching assistant to boot. In other words, she is getting paid to continue her education. Dad, the college dropout, might have been surpassed–but he is very proud of his daughter, the academic.
He also couldn’t be prouder of his younger daughter as well. Her June graduation was from high school, and just like that she has already started her freshman year at college in late August. In the state of Florida, no less. She got in with a decent scholarship to boot, and has now begun her campus life in a place that was scorchingly hot for move-in day, but will be pretty delightful during the months that winter will be in full force here in New England.
One can only imagine the taunting about the weather that is to come.
So as you might imagine, it has been a whirlwind couple of months, rolling from one big event into the next on almost a weekly basis.
Two graduations, a party, one move off campus and another move onto campus. It’s been one thing after another. There was a little bit of a vacation, but it was a feeble attempt to take some time off. Then throw in a few other lesser family milestones and the predictable stress and strain of all was tangible on more than one occasion.
Hopefully we might be forgiven for feeling a little shortchanged by this particular summer.
Particularly since on the arrival of the annual observance of Labor Day, comes the realization that it will be done for the first time in 21 years without any children at home. That’s right, this year we will be “empty nesters”, and the feeling of loss is indeed palpable.
Thus when the “80s on 8″ Sirius/XM satellite radio channel spun out the Bananarama hit “Cruel Summer” while driving home from work for this weekend–it was a little more poignant than we would have normally expected from a song featured in the soundtrack for “The Karate Kid”.
(That would be the original version with Ralph Macchio, not the remake featuring the progeny of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.)
But like those famous parents, all of us who bring children into the world want our offspring to spread their wings and take off for their own adventure at some point.
It’s just dealing with the fact that no matter when that point finally comes, it’s always too soon. And yes, the song lyric “leaving me here on my own” makes it clear.
It’s a cruel, cruel summer.