Amy Sue Nathan

A fond adieu to the white shoe

Labor Day weekend we bid an official farewell to summer, regardless of the weather.

In my suburb, school has been in full swing for a week and a half, and that is what marked the beginning of my own personal yearly calendar and means it is Fall.

In the Midwest we see temperatures spike well into September and inevitably get visited by Indian summer in October. There are no more first days of school that warrant a cardigan (as if someone around here would know what a cardigan is, let alone wear one).

I lived in the Sonoran Desert for a while, and even there, when summer is the indoor season where your skin scorches, at some point when it’s only 90 and sunny instead of 117, summer ends.
So, is summer a season or is it a state of mind? I think that question is much less meteorological than it is theoretical.

For me I find it to be a little of each — and it is accompanied by a strange tradition and a little bit of turmoil. This weekend, as I have for years before and as I will for years to come, I’ll wave ta-ta to my white purses and sandals, step on the stool I keep in my closet and relocate them to the unattainable-without-assistance-top-shelf. Next Memorial Day, or the one after, I’ll poke them with a hanger or a broom until they fall on my head. Then I’ll determine if any of it is still in style, or destined to return to style some day.

This got me thinking a little about norms and standards — those to which we succumb and those which we discard. It’s certainly a matter of choice, and I’m unconventional in many respects, doing what I want when I want and how I want. But yet, I’m a slave to the fashion rigors of June Cleaver.

Would it be wrong to carry my purchased-in-July white leather satchel for a few more weeks?

Unfortunately for me, yes it would.

I’m also on the verge of going full throttle into Fall make-up mode, which differs of course, from Summer make-up mode, but I’m making that transition slowly, as to not alarm the children or dogs.

Anyway, there’s just so much a gal in brown sandals can handle in one weekend.

* I am fully aware that this post has nothing to do with writing, but I did write it a few years ago, and edit it this morning, so in my world (which this blog is), it counts.