Labor Day 1953
Note: featuring the happy stories about Mother for the next few days - this is her week - she passed in her sleep before Monday morning12/11/17, at just shy of 92....she is free to be our angel always. I love you, Mother!
Life was very very good for the Smith Clan of Fairfield after WWII - all the sons who served, home and decorated for their heroism for Army Engineers in the Battle of the Bulge, Army Communications, Marines, Army Infantry, Army MPs, and our Dad Pioneer Army Air Corps "Smitty the Flight Mechanic" . All home and married to their sweethearts who served on the home front and all grateful and joyfully working at grand new jobs and raising families.
Photoshop needed here - but it's Father's fun with new camera day and all three of us with Mother at one time. Rare to get us all to stand still together that long.
Exuberant Gram and Gramps so proud and nearing their 50th wedding anniversary, and fit for it, joined the annual Labor Day Picnic - a patriotic work song celebration - and this year it was at Auntie Em's big homestead, to save Gram the work for a change at their "Little White House".
Mother was tall and lovely and expecting her third child very soon and fidgeted that morning, wondering if it was wise to join seven Irish sons and a daughter and their respective families at the blowout event of the year. She had experienced a false labor, a trip to hospital to deliver, but home again, and NOT deflated enough - so it could be any time now. But the All-American Smith Family day found her doing her part with the women, setting up the table and presenting the feast, as the men talked over their game of horseshoes and the children helped with chores and played running and swinging games at the fine large place under the trees and in the field with the sheep and one good donkey.
NOT without caprice, Mother thought it might help things along to overdo the watermelon-eating and did. Sure enough ! The second trip the hospital soon followed, and blushing, back to face the crowd at the picnic in an hour, from a second false labor. Father and the others making jokes about my Mother's desire to "go have this baby" on Labor Day made for a LOT of extra fun that day, for everyone but our Mother and the baby!
But she was NOT wrong to feel like getting things going - when our sister Lori was born on September 18th, she was not fat, but a very long baby weighing in at 9 pounds 3 ounces! No wonder she felt it MIGHT be time! Third millennium medicine would have been able to image it out and let Mother deliver earlier, but back then, no. And...Since Lori soon developed normally in size, it WAS surely just a long pregnancy resulting in high birth weight. This one remains a family favorite LORISTORY , all these years later! Hope you enjoyed it!
And always a quick prayer and a wish that all who ARE in labor on this American Labor Day, enjoy a celebration of life of it all - today and always!
