Labor Day Lullaby

How many Dar Williams songs have I posted on this blog? Not so many that I can't post another! For it is Labor Day weekend, which always makes me anticipate the end of summer, like a lot of people probably. And this song just captures it perfectly - the sadness of things ending, the excitement and fear of things to come, and the overall sense of longing. For what? I dunno, but it seems to be the quintessential human condition.

End Of The Summer
by Dar Williams
The summer ends and we wonder where we are
And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car
And you both look so young
And last night was hard, you said
You packed up every room
And then you cried and went to bed
But today you closed the door and said
"We have to get a move on.
It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead,
We push ourselves ahead."

And it was cloudy in the morning
And it rained as you drove away
And the same things looked different
It's the end of the summer
It's the end of the summer,
When you move to another place

And I feel like the neighbor's girl who will never be the same
She walked alone all spring,
She had a boyfriend when the summer came
And he gave her flowers in a lightning storm
They disappeared at night in green fields of silver corn
And sometime in July she just forgot that he was leaving
So when the fields were dying, she held on to his sleeves
She held on to his sleeves

And she doesn't want to let go
'Cause she won't know what she's up against
The classrooms and the smart girls
It's the end of the summer
It's the end of the summer
When you hang your flowers up to dry

And I had a dream it blows the autumn through my head
It felt like the first day of school
But I was going to the moon instead
And I walked down the hall
With the notebooks they got for me
My dad led me through the house
My mom drank instant coffee
And I knew that I would crash
But I didn't want to tell them
There are just some moments when your family makes sense
They just make sense

So I raised up my arms and my mother put the sweater on
We walked out on the dark and frozen grass
The end of the summer
It's the end of the summer
When you send your children to the moon

The summer ends and we wonder who we are
And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car
And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree
I passed the farms that made it
Through the last days of the century
And I knew that I was going to learn again
Again, in this less hazy light
I saw the fields beyond the fields
The fields beyond the fields

And the colors are much brighter now
It's like they really want to tell the truth
We give our testimony to the end of the summer
It's the end of the summer,
You can spin the light to gold.
*****************************************************************
In particular, this Labor Day weekend I'm remembering how at this-time-last-year (the type of reflection I often undertake, the luxury - or curse - of one who keeps journals and has that historical record), we were newly arrived in Florida after two and 1/2 long days driving from Milwaukee, in our two cars when we meant to make it with one. At the last minute we decided that we had no choice but to rent a car for the journey and all our stupid stuff. We bought walkie-talkies on the way out of town, so that we could stay in touch during our road-trip.

And what an adventure it was. After enduring the ridiculous Chicago-area traffic, we stopped over the first night in Lowell, IN, at a Super 8 motel that was barely more than a trucker rest-stop. Superrrr I said...upon viewing a room so scummy that I'm surprised there weren't cockroaches in the too-small bed we shared for too few hours of rest (and if they were there, we were too exhausted to notice them).

Up at dawn painfully, I remember thinking, and probably voicing to David, over horrible in-room coffee with powdered creamer: I'm not sure I'm gonna make it.

But make it I did, to Chattanooga, TN with enough time to go out for Mexican dinner, and a much nicer hotel in which to slumber that evening. The extra night on the road that we hadn't planned for meant an extra day on the car rental, which turned out to be not quite the big expensive deal I feared. But as I wrote in my journal "...it was a long, hard day's drive because I only got about 4 hours sleep and was worried about my longevity. Eating only coffee, walnuts, and beef/bison jerky the whole way and so constipated that it's painful and feels like giving birth or something. Hoping to make it to FL without needing medical attention. :)"

And yet, magically, the following night at about 11pm (Wednesday Sept. 2nd) we arrived safely in Sarasota, thankfully without needing to stop en route at an emergency room. Once we got to David's friend Ed's comfortable 2 bedroom house, where he said we could stay "as long as we liked" or however long it took us to find a situation that was right for us, I felt like I could finally
start breathing again. And then there was a Thursday and a Friday and by the weekend (Sunday Sept 6th) I was writing in my journal "it already feels like we've sort of been here forever, but in a good way."















On Labor Day 2009, Monday Sept. 7th, what seemed so strange was just the experience of our first national holiday completely untethered from family and home. A holiday which meant much less to us because we were both still not-working and so it wasn't that big deal of having an extra day off. We went to Myakka State Park, slogged through trails of swamp and marvelled at the alligators. And felt all those Fall feelings, though it was still hot as any summer.