Monday 9/7/2009 Labor

An old friend made a charming reference to the fact that we don’t labor on Labor Day, so, maybe we should forget Memorial Day…

Labor Day is yet again upon us. The day is set aside to celebrate unions and workers. To me it has always been the celebration of the end of summer. The last picnic, the last trip to the beach and the last days before school starts. This holiday was always a touch bitter sweet for me. It seemed to be the last time my neighbors all got together before we all become closed up for the winter. With school, work, sports and other activities filling up the calendar again, we will have only sporadic Friday Family & Friends fire attendance. The hard work of yet another school year begins.

I’ve been thinking a lot about labor in another sense lately. My nephew and his wife recently had their first baby. She went through a very long and painful labor but as is the plan, their son was born healthy and happy. This event has had me reflect on my own labor with my children. My daughter was as she is in real life. Tough, determined and ran the show at her pace. I remember going to the hospital late on a Wednesday evening. “Yes”, they told me, “active labor”. This was a very good thing… I had made 2 previous trips to the hospital, only to have labor stop. We were on our way to bringing the most fabulous creature into the world for all to see. On Thursday evening, I had still not made significant progress. It was decided that I would be sent for an x-ray to see if they could determine if my daughter was too big to deliver. Keep in mind I was in active labor. We went to X-ray and when the tech met us, I swear he looked to be 15 years old. Without so much as a glance at me, he told me to hop up on the table, lie on my side and put my knees to my chest. He then mentioned I should hold my breath. This kid was maybe 5 feet tall… my husband, all 6 feet 4 inches calmly walked over to the tech and mumbled something… I don’t know what it was but suddenly this kid couldn’t do enough to keep me comfortable. The x-rays were not conclusive so I labored until Saturday morning when my daughter was born via c-section. As they placed her in his arms, a light passed between them, their own connection that will never be broken. My husband was the calmest I had ever seen him during those days of laboring. Every so often he would tell me he needed a break and step out. He would come back rejuvenated about 10 minutes later. Each time he left, he seemed to come back fresher than when he had left. It wasn’t until years later that I find out he had a cooler of beer in the car and was running downstairs for “re-freshments”.

Our wonderful son came along just a little over a year later. As I was prepped for a repeat c-section, my late husband knew I was nervous. As we all took our places in the operating room, my sweetie tried to calm me down. With his cheek pressed to mine, he sang a little song to me. He joked with me. He teased me. He told me how he loved me. I so clearly remember looking in to his beautiful eyes and feeling my heart swell. I remember realizing l love this man more than I ever thought I could love another human being. It wasn’t just in that moment that I loved him. It was deep and unending. As soon as they delivered our son, he was placed in my husband’s hands. I saw the same light pass between them as I had seen pass between my daughter and her father. I was proud of my labor, proud of what I had accomplished with this hard work. Hard work spanning 9 months and then a lifetime.

It is called labor when we bring someone into the world. It’s called that because it is hard, never ending work. But isn’t the work just as hard if not harder when someone leaves this world? Why don’t we have a neat and tidy name for this transition? Grieving isn’t the same. To me that’s a small piece of it all. Why can’t this be called Labor-part 2 or Labor the next phase? How is this different for a man who, while an intrigal part of the process, really doesn’t labor with a baby? I just think this is such an important piece of life and one that while I absolutely, without question, hate and would give anything not to be going through, feel honored to have the stamina to labor through.

So I will take today as a celebration of how far I have come in the past months. I will grab hold of my small victories as I embrace the love, passion, sadness and hurt I still and will continue to have in my heart. Many have told me that “holidays will never be the same”. They are correct. They will never be the same. But just as the season may have the same name, many of us have the same name, the turning leaves come from the same trees, nothing at anytime is the same as it was the time before. I will do all I can to embrace the changes in my heart and head and in the world around me. I will embrace the labor of my life and be better for it.

I hope so.