This time of year always makes me nostalgic.
There’s something about seeing the store aisles crammed with pencils and backpacks and trapper keepers (in my mind. trapper keepers still exist, in my mind.) that brings me back to Labor Days past.
Two years ago, Labor Day brought me and my husband to New York City.

We were newlyweds,
so in love,
and so psyched to have the city at our feet.
We spent some incredibly meaningful time on the great white way,
seeing Spring Awakening and Rent.
You see, Rent was in its final week on Broadway,
and we got to see one of the very last shows performed at the Nederlander Theatre.
It was my ninth time seeing the show,
and my husband’s first,
and he fell in love with the incredible rock opera, deeply.
Neither of us will ever forget that performance; not only because it was rousing, soulful and more moving than any other production I’d seen, but because we were almost part of a major brawl that was taking place right next to us.
You see, the majority of the audience at these last shows was comprised of die-hard Rent-heads,
including the girl next to me.
She sang/spoke/cheered/danced along to the entire performance.
This didn’t bother me, as I knew the show backwards and forwards myself, but it did irk (and by irk, I mean incense) the couple sitting in front of us.
They shushed her, she banged on the back of the guy’s seat, and a war ensued.
The couple in the first row reported the supa-fan to security, and the fight only escalated from there.
Let me just say that during intermission, the girl next to me broke down into such hysterics, that I was forced to hug her, just to calm this enthusiastic stranger down, and ended up being drenched in a cringe-worthy combination of her tears and snot. You know what they say, no good deed goes un-slobbered on.
At that point I was (sticky and) determined to evoke the message of the show, so I mediated a conversation between the feuding parties, reminding the couple about the lessons of tolerance and love displayed on the stage before us.
In the end, the couple sucked it up,
the girl continued to sing, at the top of her lungs,
and I hosed myself down as soon as the curtain call ended.
And, we managed to leave our mark on the wall of the Nederlander,
a theatre that I had been visiting since I was in Middle School, when I first fell in love with that beautiful, beautiful show.

It’s amazing that two years have passed since that most memorable Labor Day
Since that time, we have added a Ziggy

and, well, yeah, there’s the new baby,

and there have been more than
a thousand sweet kisses.
So many more.
So, it’s been a couple of years,
and we’re back to where we started…
except, not really.
Labor Day draws near, once more,
and we’re in a new place, with our new little family,
staring a new season.
A season of love.