I’m clearly more of a see the day that is gone kind of girl.

Come Labor Day, life slows dramatically in this Lake Michigan beach town. The neon vacancy sign at the nearby Bluewater Inn, dark since mid-June, already glows again on more nights than not, and the beach parking lot is filled with blowing sand instead of cars. Growing up in Houston, summer bled all the way into October. Pumpkin patches and red and yellow leaves of fall were things I knew only from books and movies—as foreign to me as the sweaters and wool skirts national mag