Seasons

There is a crisis of season identity when you are not in school anymore, or in an altered school environment. I know, you may have overlooked this in your day-to-day existence, and I am here to illuminate you. For all the years that we can remember, school was our main season indicator. Labor Day=fall. Not because that's when the calendar says it's fall, or even because the weather changes significantly. Because that's when school starts. Thanksgiving marks the start of the real winter, only because you have an extra two days off of school, and all the Christmas decorations go up everywhere (though I swear that the decorations keep going up earlier and earlier, and now Walgreens carries Christmas decorations right along with the discounted Halloween candy). Spring, yep, spring break (well, yes, that would be why they call it that), and summer, well, that's when school gets out, somewhere in the vicinity of Memorial Day. So there you have it.

When I got out of college, the first thing that struck me the next fall was that there was no reprieve from this working thing. My whole life, I had been able to count on the fact that if I was bored, or unhappy, whatever I was currently doing would come to an end at the end of the season. There was an ability to get through things knowing that four months was my maximum duration of torture. And then school is over, and you realize that there is the eerie possibility for you to have the exact same days over and over again for the next 50 years with no significant change. Now, obviously, this is not necessarily true for those in our generation, as we are likely to change jobs 9 or so times in our lifetime. However, that still means that we have to spend years, not just months, doing the same thing. Yikes.

I find it weird that now that I am back in school, I have the expectation that I should revert back to my seasons thing. I tell myself that it should now feel like fall because I had to buy school books and folders, and dedicate some of my precious mental energy to actually listening to a teacher and taking notes. I think that this would actually be the case, that I would start to label my seasons again based on my school semesters, if I wasn't going to summer school. Summer school ruins everything for me. Because now I've ruined the "no more teachers" concept of summer. Freedom, gone. Year-round class. I wonder if those kids who have year-round school have disdain for those kids buying their brand new lunchboxes every August. The year-rounders have to figure out the seasons by the weather and the calendar, oddly reminiscent of the societies in place long before this one. The sign of fall should not be sharpened pencils and Superman lunchboxes. It should be the sound and smell of crunching leaves underfoot, and the glorious joy of putting on your favorite blue jeans. I love fall, it's my favorite season. However, despite the cooler weather and the encroaching darkness of the night taking up more of my daylight hours, it is not yet fall. I am sitting and looking out onto a wooded grove, and there is not a leaf changing color in sight. I want to enjoy summer until it's fully over, and then move on to enjoying the fall. I know lots of people that want to live in Florida, San Diego, or Hawaii, because it's idyllic all year round. Me, I want to live where the trees remind me of time's quick passage, and remind me that I need to be stripped down to my very core on a regular basis in order to be the person I was created to be. I have a picture in my head, of a lane covered in trees dripping brilliant deep reds, orange and gold leaves, as they float gently on to my car. I have been there, and it is glorious. But I feel no hurry. It will come. And it will go, just as quickly. It is up to me to pay attention, and appreciate, and nothing more.