A little over 45 years ago, I stood in the living room of my college advisor, a beautifully wild man with wild hair and a creative spirit that had lit a fire in me and under me.
I was helping him pack.
He had not been granted tenure, and his contract was up, so he and his young family were heading out to his wife’s family home to work on their next steps.
It was, I recall him saying, the first time in 32 years that he would not be going back to school on Labor Day.
Back to school.
For just a moment (if that is even possible), let’s set aside the in-out-virtual-hybrid mishegas that characterizes BTS 2020-21 in New Jersey and elsewhere, and let’s agree that this fall is one for the history books, and that we hope it truly is unique. Atypical. Unforgettable and yet highly forgettable.
In a usual year, the non-K-pop BTS drives everything, even if your children are not climbing aboard yellow-orange buses every weekday, as mine are not. Yes, even though those days are over for me, the BTS season ripples my life.
Like everybody’s.
Shopping, or avoiding frenetic shoppers. One last Shore fling, or one last weekend to stay off the Garden State Parking Lot … er, Parkway. Seagulls and french fries; well, that’s a year-round challenge when you’re blessed to live at the Shore.
Eye doctors and dentists and hairstylists.
Traffic, with far too many amateurs on the road.
A new sports season. A new theater season. A new TV season.
Political Silly Season.
Every one of these triggered by BTS, which itself was scheduled by the rural need for kids to be out of school for three months to help with planting and harvesting when America was heavily agrarian.
Some leaves already are turning color. The sun, likewise, is more orange and lower in the sky. In three weeks, there will be less daylight than dark. From today onward, the summer honey-do list gets more urgent, forcing triage and prioritization.
It was 61 degrees when I got up this morning. Another heat wave? Wait till next year.
In this year that
Owes.
Us.
So.
Damned.
Much,
is it too much to ask for summer to last until Thanksgiving? For that, I could and would give extreme thanks.
Ah, but reality is the B-word. I just detest having to suck it up and deal with summer-into-autumn. It’s never been my time of year.
My advisor — a genius actor/director — did land a wonderful teaching position where he shaped the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of other students.
Like this summer, time with him was abbreviated by forces outside my control (as if anything really is in any of our control…).
And like him, 2020 has changed my life.
I prefer the way he did it.
