Labor Day

In The Beginning...

August 28, 2022

Rewritten March 27, 2026 (Her memory is more than spotty now)

In another group, at another time, we assigned topics. Given it was the end of August, my topic was to write a piece on Labor Day.

I had no idea what words I would choose. On this day, at this time, as my mother is 97 years, and tired of being alive, fatigues of past memory demons and yearning to be aching joints-free, hard-of-hearing-free, and who knows what other maladies plague a 97-year-old human, I can only write of my appreciation of her “labor day” for my birth, lo those 78 years ago.

At 8:30AM, August 11, 1944, her work really began.

She thought those long hours of pain as I fought to get out of her were labor. She had no idea of the labor days (weeks, months, years, and decades) ahead.

I realize now, as she is fading away from this existence, how much work it was for her to get me to this iteration of me. She worked hard.

From breastfeeding to close guidance while working outside of the tenement and house, putting in hours, being “bone tired,” as she called it, caring for me, a boy, and my 3 sisters, and dealing with my father, her mother and father, as well as in-laws and her siblings.

She wanted to become a doctor but was discouraged from within (her own demons) and without (parents, husband, siblings, and the world in the 40s. She labored as grocery store clerk, court reporter, clerk-typist, expert in the social security administration office in Fresno, California, and devoted mother, grandmother, and great grandmother always providing needed (though not always welcomed) words of wisdom and advice and encouragement.

It has been a labor of love…but labor. It was hard. She would and never will admit it. She loved being a mom, grandmom, and great grandmom, but it was labor. Her children, led by her son, were projects.

We were like goldfish or guppies moving swiftly every time food was dropped int the bowl, as every time she left to go to work, she had 4 young voices moving in on her and begging for her to “bring me something back.”

And we meant ME, not us. ME.

She had to deal with our selfishness and daily demands. I used to wonder and would ask why we had to sweep under the couch, since nobody would ever look there. She would always answer, “I will know.”

I used to wonder what she meant when she said she was bone tired. Now I know. I did not “get” that when she washed our clothes on a scrub board with Fels Naphtha bar soap and used a zillion clothespins to hang them on the line to dry that was strung up in the backyard or the community basement of the tenement. Then she had to iron our clothes and our dad’s shirts. I wondered why she never felt finished.

It did not occur to me that the minute she finished a load of clothes or the hanging, or the ironing that, were, at that moment, wearing clothes that needed to get into the cycle. The labor was never done. I did not get it.

I was impatient and wanted clean clothes and prepared dinned and such, not realizing all the labor required of her to accomplish same.

Her labor continues to this day. She now lives with my youngest sister in Washington D.C.

There is a backyard with lots of plant life that she tends to in warm weather, daily. Daily.

I think of that first day now, as Appreciation Day, not so much Labor Day.

Her memory is very spotty, and she always demurs when being complimented on her “fruit:” her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, who still want her input.

She is essential, and will not rest until…