A Slightly Different Take On "Labor" Day

It was a nice gift. Yesterday, I received a validation logo and seal as a winner of the Claymore Award for Down at the Balinese, but it got me to thinking about the timing. It was Labor Day, generally a day when most Americans do anything but labor if they are lucky.

That said, I realized that the word could have an entirely different connotation, so I’m going to indulge that. Now, I would have never written a decent word, and I certainly wouldn’t have won any of the awards for my books if it weren’t for my mother. In that way she has given me my life, via hard labor … repeatedly, to be honest.

Of course there was the whole parturition thing, though being honest, I was a forceps delivery. I’m told, the first time anyone saw me, I had a large red blade mark above one eye. I think that means something. I often cite it as the reason for my overall saturnine countenance and wariness with strangers and most of humanity. After all, if you consider my struggle with mankind, I’m justified. They struck first.

The second time she gave me my life, and the incident that makes this award reception applicable, was when she introduced me to the magnificence of words. I was eleven and my mother had a book called The Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist. I wanted to be a doctor and so I thought I would give it a read. It was one of the first books about criminal profiling. She told me I could read it, but warned me that the subject matter was graphic, had a vivid description of the Boston Strangler's and Boston Bomber’s psychosexual manifestations. It sounded like good counsel and I put off reading it for a year. It was probably best that I did. In the interval she turned me on to a William Faulkner story “Barn Burning” about the fair minded if conflicted son of a ne’er-do-well father. What I learned was that there were two stories there; the superficial tale and something amazingly better—metaphor. I was hooked. My mother had delivered me again, this time intellectually.

The third, and maybe most important gift of a life, was when my father left us and she chose to back up her constant admonition that the way to improvement was through education. She forewent finding someone else as partner and instead took the hard road of going to school with two boys to support as a secretary. In the end she achieved two degrees and a career as a teacher. She didn't pay lip service, she did it. What she also taught me with that was the real meaning of love. While it took me a while to put words to it, her second labor had already given me the tools to start. Ultimately, I understand that love was the opposite of selfishness. She had put our interests and happiness ahead of her own in order to raise us to honorable manhood.

So, sure, like I said, this award is mine, but I would have never gotten anywhere near it if not for the three labors of my mother. Certainly, I’ll never approach the holiday with the same mentality again. Thank you, Mom. Times three.