By Staff
Labor Day weekend has always been a bittersweet holiday for me.
It's the unofficial ending of summer and the beginning of the busy fall schedule.
It used to signal the beginning of school.
Sometime within the past 20 years, or so, schools started classes in August.
Being rather rebellious parents, my wife and I kept our sons out until after the holiday a couple of times.
Of course, our stamina for "swimming against the current" soon weakened and we gave in.
We used to close our cottage on Labor Day, packing the car with children, animals and uneaten food from the fridge.
I recall one such weekend that was frustrating, yet rather amusing.
We drove two cars that weekend because we had a lot of stuff to bring home, including bikes, two cats and a dog.
Our well-laid plans called for one boy to ride with my wife and the other to ride with me in our cute, bright yellow Ford Pinto.
I had a bike rack on the back of the Pinto, a kid strapped into the front seat and two cats riding loose in the back seat.
We had no more pulled out of the driveway when both bicycles fell off the rack onto the dirt road and one cat escaped into the woods when I opened the door to survey the damage.
I managed to secure the bikes; the cat was another matter.
We called and called and hunted and hunted - battle scars were inflicted by the blackberry bushes we walked through to find that cat.
After two hours of coaxing to no avail, we decided to put food on the porch and leave the screen door ajar and return the following weekend (without bikes!).
Sure enough, Patrick returned the next weekend, unscathed and showing little wear for roughing it in the woods for a week.
Patrick lived many more years, but we never invited him to the cottage again.
When he died we buried him under a pine tree behind our cottage.
And that was the last time we kept our kids out of school until after Labor Day. And it was the last time that we closed the cottage on Labor Day.
This is the first time I've spent Labor Day alone at the cottage.
Schedules just didn't work out for all of us to be here this time.
Well, I'm not exactly alone -my Westie, Dickens, is with me, sleeping on the window seat, guarding the property!
I'll soon pack up and head home early Monday morning to avoid heavier traffic later in the day.
In the meantime, memories of kids and bikes and cats and dogs play in my mind - kids running through the yard and playing in the tree house, splashing in the shallow water of Lake Michigan, cheerful wood fires in the fireplace and candles flickering on the mantle, our dogs playing catch with tennis balls, friends gathering for evening visits.
Cheerful noises, happy voices, restful times, amusing stories (told on the porch, of course).
Now it's time to settle in to the fall routines and let summer pass into colors and fragrances of fall.
Yes, we'll still come to the cottage for a couple more months to catch our breath and renew our spirits and to remember so many pleasant times of bikes and kids and cats and dogs.