Little m Long a

I will never forget my brother’s account of the origin of that phrase as relayed to him by our mother upon his arrival home from work one evening.  As he walked into the living room where she always sat, upright with her hands folded ever so properly in her lap he could tell that something was troubling her.  The house was in slight disarray but nothing so out of proportion as to be cause for great alarm.  Yet she looked distraught, clearly ill at ease and almost mournful.  Had she lost something, someone?  One of the cats or the dog?  Had she received some sort of bad news from one of her bridge buddies?  Did someone die?  What could possibly be going on?  “What is it?” he almost regretted asking.

“There’s not a cookie in the house.”

I’m not even sure if he remembers the story but for some reason it stuck with me and I have used the phrase often, quite often.  My mother was completely serious in both the meaning of her words and the utter sense of remorse she felt at having to face the day sans Keebler.   I, of course,  can’t think of the phrase without laughing inside as my mother once again taught me a lesson.  This one in particular about the insignificance of seemingly monumental events and how to balance the perspective of those events in relation to the overall grander picture.  What??  Yeah, you’re right.  It’s just a humorous story about how I came to use the phrase myself.

And so it was that today, Labor Day, September 3, 2007 that I uttered the phrase, “It’s a sad day.”  Did someone pass?  Did we lose a pet?  Did I finally catch that bastard raccoon and properly dispose of him?  Did one of my lot decide to be the first to need that frantic, rushed trip to the ER for proper bone re-alignment and casting?  Did it rain on the final day of our three day weekend?  Uh, nope.  But I’ll be sure to post pictures of the first cast and you’ll also be the first to know the fate of Mr. Coon when the time comes (no pictures though, I’m not a sadist).  No, our mood was stifled ever so because today was the last day…..to visit the pool.

That’s right, sports fans.  Summer is officially over now.  Don’t start checking the weather channel, noting the warm temperatures that are expected to remain well into the rest of September.  Summer is over!  Start pulling out the sweat shirts and warm-ups.  Have your boiler serviced for the impending winter and sharpen the blades on your snow blowers.  Summer is over.  And for you readers in the South, well, I’ve got kids so I can’t say F**k You or Go to Hell, that just wouldn’t seem proper of me.  Trust me, I come from the South and I’ve been water skiing on Thanksgiving break, I’ve golfed on New Year’s Day (and broken a sweat, but never 85) so I realize the thought of a pool actually closing at the beginning of September seems preposterous.  I suppose I’m not so far removed from the lower latitudes that I don’t find the situation here in America’s Heartland a little offsetting myself but that is the situation in which I now find myself and I must deal with it accordingly.  “Man up!” as my wife would say.

As fate and good fortune would have it though, the day was beautiful, warm and sunny and all five of my kids were in a collective great mood.  So off to the pool we went.  “the pool!!“  (Sorry, I just channeled a bit of David Shannon there.  If you’ve got kids, you know what I’m talking about.)  Could not have had a better time.  The country club was celebrating Labor Day with a big cookout and tons of games at the pool for the kids.  There was the always popular dive-jump-splash-fall off the diving board contest, the penny drop (where you throw a handful of coins into the water and stand by the side of the pool all the while watching your precious children drown in an effort to bring the coin tally to a grand total of 17 cents), the water balloon toss and this years crowd favorite dumping and entire gallon bottle of liquid soap into the kiddie pool and standing back to watch the ensuing mêlée of sudsy fun.  (Bonus:  Bath time–check.)

Of course, I did not bring my camera.  My command of the English language will in no way do the following picture justice but I’ve got to give it a try.  Classic moment of the day was my 3 year old daughter, Zia and the ensemble she assembled for herself and her pool time leisure.  One of the great things about our pool membership at the country club this summer was that the office was filled with pool toys, masks, floaties and whatnots that kids just love when they hit the water.  It’s open to the kids and they are free to explore at will and use what they want.  Zia availed herself to all there was to offer and as best as I am able to relay, this is how she emerged.  Curley Sue sandy blonde hair (she went in with that), fluorescent orange swim goggles with a white elastic strap.  The ends of the straps flopped in tandem just above each ear.  She was sporting a big purple ring which she chose to wear on her right index finger, and a blue slap bracelet.  She was wearing her pink hula girl one-piece swimsuit, one size too small because we couldn’t find Dora and her swim bubble.  It’s a yellow and blue foam back-pack that straps around her waist with a blue nylon strap.  Somehow she managed to find a matching fluorescent orange squirt gun and the piece de resistance, the way too big black swim fins. 

Damn me and my forgetfulness!!!  She was absolutely precious and although I know that a picture would have been totally priceless the image that is on an endless replay loop in my mind is the smile with which she emerged plastered ear to ear and unfading even with the enormous amount of concentration she was using to walk in those fins.   Yep.  It’s a sad day.  But you’d never know it from my kids.

Lagniappe:   Happy Days