Whew, I hope I don’t go into labor on labor day. I know they have a day set aside for it and all, but that has to be the worst way to celebrate a day off. I try not to think about being in labor. I try not to do that all 365 days of every year.
I mean, it brought about a wonderful gift (John 16:21), but in the meantime, I took to heart what the childbirth classes taught us about squeezing your partner’s hand, and my husband is now maimed for life. He can’t write a check. I tried to say all the beautiful things they taught us to say to distract us from the pain, but all I could yell was, “When I get to heaven, Eve’s gonna get it!”
And let us never forget about the intern who gave me the enema, and then said, “Wait! If you’re hooked up to all this equipment, how do we get you to the bathroom? I’ll be right back.”
I took the law into my own hands.
So labor day . . . Yeah, it doesn’t exactly conjure up celebration with a charcoal grill.
Okay, yeah, I do know it’s about a different kind of labor which is better than the kind where people stand around your bed and tell you how to push. This time, they stand around your bed and say, “Get up! It’s a holiday. Let’s make homemade ice cream. Take me to the mall. The doorbusters start at 8 am. Don’t spend your day off in bed. Let’s go to the lake. Where are my flip-flops?”
There’s just a little piece of irony in the fact that we celebrate those who get up and go to work every day by not getting up and going to work. Because hot dogs. Because ribs.
And in a little corner of North Alabama, pretty much isolated to Colbert and Lauderdale counties . . . Because chicken stew!
I know. I had never heard of this until marrying a Florence, Alabama boy. I had never heard tell of such (as we say when really flabbergasted) and I’m from Alabama. Born, raised, blackberry picked, and mosquito-bite covered.
“You mean,” I said, “when it’s 134 degrees in the shade, y’all are wanting to even think about hot stew?” Mmmm. They’re drawn to it like a Lego to a bare heel. I thought maybe it was just a family thing at first – they have traditions I don’t even have the strength to go into – But no! Every fire station, every private school, every senior center has people by the road waving poster boards about chicken stew sold by the gallon. People think it’s the best thirty dollars they’ve ever spent.
Truth be told, I’ve been backstage at the firehouse by now crying over the onions. I’ve stirred the paddle in the black cauldron (no comments, please), and it was just about then that I truly understood the word “labor” in Labor Day.
“Don’t y’all want to eat this stuff in like, February, sitting around on an iceberg? Does that make more sense to anybody but me?” Nope. In their defense, Labor Day isn’t the only day this stuff comes out. It makes a huge appearance on the fourth of July as well. And Memorial Day. Apparently, it’s any time we’re just thinking about surrendering to a heat stroke that the idea of hot soup sounds sensible.
So . . . whatcha gonna do for the holiday? I’m thinking of cranking out a freezer of cool vanilla ice cream. We might play a round of corn hole on the deck. Maybe I’ll make it to an end-of-summer clearance sale.
I’m really not sure what I’ll do, but if I were a chicken, I’m pretty sure I’d get out of Lauderdale County.
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