Labor Daze
Task 35, September 5 to September 12
“If there comes a day that we cannot be together, keep me in your heart, I will be there forever…” Winnie the Pooh.
You may have noticed from previous posts that my mind is very much an uninhibited and free-flowing environment, where my concepts and random thoughts–like unleashed dogs in a cage-free pet kennel–run amok, with one critical difference: my notions and ideas are basically unsupervised.
Today’s post is no different.
On Labor Day, between nap time and grill time I got to thinking about the concept of Labor, and with all the hubris that only a baby boomer can muster when the conversation swings around to work, I spend more than ten minutes telling my male friends that I started working when I was 14 years old in 1967 (at the Ashtabula Skyway Drive-In motion picture theater. “Bonnie and Clyde”, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, transported me, cinematically speaking, that summer), then worked my way through college and I never stopped toiling until my retirement.
Which only provoked my male friends to relate their own employment histories, and the conversation ended where it always did: four grown men, tired from talking and lying, toasting each other with a beer and then sitting silently as I burned the Costco steaks.
The steaks burned because my mind, mesmerized by the sizzling coals of the char-grill, drifted into another stream of thought connected to “labor” but only by a thread: specifically concerning a woman named Helen Green, who carried a baby full term without realizing that she was pregnant. She was on vacay, staying at a Toronto hotel with her hubby and their other child, a two year old son, and she got up in the middle of the night with stomach pains, went to the bathroom (she calls it a “loo”, as she is from Bristol England) and feeling the urge to push, so she pushes, and out pops a baby which she swears she didn’t realize that she was carrying. “I had no idea what was happening,” said Helen. “After two massive pushes there was a baby, so I picked it up out of the loo and held her in my arms”.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HELEN GREEN, CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST, OLD PEOPLE THIS WEEK, ON YOUTUBE, SPOTIFY AND APPLE PODCASTS.
I believe that it’s a true story, but it’s ludicrous, because I know that women know when they are pregnant and they would never keep it a secret–in the 18 months that my wife was pregnant with our two sons I was made aware of it every day.
And of course thinking about my wife’s labors and the birth of my children, which took place in delivery rooms at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, and was located conveniently across the street from Jerry’s Famous Deli, where I could resuscitate myself while my wife was resting in the recovery room, and I could scarf down a bagel with lox and capers–a delicious respite before the real parenting started…
Which brings me to the topic of today’s post–the utter emptiness and sadness of being an empty nest parent.
I’ve been a parent for over 40 years–more than half my life–from my late 20s until today, and until 2020 I had a child around the house (albeit because of COVID, and truth be told, he didn’t like being stuck at home at the age of 19 with his mom and dad and poor internet when all he wanted to do was to be in his college (Georgetown) apartment, swilling happy hour beer–at least one thing we have in common–knoodling with his girlfriend, playing intramural soccer and partying at the bars on Wisconsin Ave); but I digress, again–but by 2021 he was back in D.C., and ready, masked or not, to pick up where he left off, and his mother and I were suddenly, and irrevocably, alone.
I’d taken parenting for granted, and when the kids weren’t around anymore, and frankly without a NEED to be around anymore, a chunk of my self-worth drained out of me. Who’s hand needed holding? Who needed help with their homework? Who needed a ride to little league practice? Why am I cleaning up vomit in the back of the car?
Parenting didn’t just fill my time, it filled my soul. Gave me purpose. Or put it another way: your job gives you money, your hobbies fill time, your wife gives you an ulcer, but parenting gives your life meaning.
And you have to go on. You never know when they might need you, if for no other reason than to extend them some cash for a plane ticket, or because they need the Netflix password, or if, on a rare and wonderful day, they want your advice…
The question is: knowing the pain of the empty nest, if I could re-do my life, would I have kids again (this is akin to the Sophie’s choice I confronted during the last football season. Which would I prefer: beating Michigan or winning the national championship? Hmmmmm. But I digress again). OF COURSE I would have kids again.
But it is, not without irony, parental purgatory.
TASK:
Find an empty nester. Hand them a strong drink and rub their back.