Summer Begins After Labor Day

This year my summer will not really begin until after Labor Day. It’s a strange feeling knowing that I have over a month to go until any real action happens.

It’s because we’re making the annual trek to Seatowne 14 the second week of September. It’s partially to save some money. I am hoping we luck out as far as weather this year and have an Indian summer. With my luck, this summer’s constant heat will decide to break the night before we leave and everyone up here will be thrilled and I’ll be spitting nails while sitting on the deck in jeans and a sweatshirt.

This better not happen. I refuse to wear anything but shorts in that house.

There are a few advantages to going to the shore after Labor Day. That holiday won’t be as depressing as it normally is for me because there will still be some summer afterward for me. The water will be at its warmest (although it has been in the 70ºs already) and there will be a little less traffic and fewer people on the beach. Plus, it’s not like it will be snowing on Sept. 8. We’re bound to have some good days.

It can be hard to wait, though, especially since it’s been a brutally hot summer and I’d love to spend these 90º days on the beach. Last night as the derecho moved in I was on the deck looking up at the clouds and they looked like the waves, the way they tumbled and ebbed and flowed. I was thinking how awesome it would have been to see that big storm from the deck at the beach house. This is one of my favorite pastimes as the deck is screened in so we don’t have to go in when it rains, like I do at home.

I’ve been biding my time by taking the occasional day trip to Rehoboth but for now, the summer seems sort of long and quiet. It’s like I’m just hanging out and waiting. It’s not so bad because this makes the summer seem longer, like July has been one endless stretch of undisturbed beach that you can get lost in.

This year we will be the only people who get excited by the end of summer at Labor Day because we’ll just be getting started. I have always been who, metaphorically and literally, sits out on the deck until I’m shivering and the leaves turn, because I’m that reluctant to see the season end.