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! 

Amazon Revelations Adulations Celebrations Postulations Reverberations

Happy Holiday!  I wished it to the Amazon chat helper today again for the 7th time since first buying Prime in Autumn 2011, as they thanked me for the longtime membership.

So I said, " You make every day a holiday - you empower my life!"   I started with Amazon for the product but I stay for Customer Service!  

All the time saved by technology and folk like Amazon !  - that "service with a smile" commitment is wonderfully old-fashioned while the tech to make it real is positively future.    I am one happy customer.   Never once has my plea over a point been ignored.  Amazon Customer Service has come through for me perfectly almost every time. 

So yesterday, when I said I was writing about Amazon,  the Amazon representative who was helping me suggested I post it to Jeff Bezos.    I thought - "I  don’t know enough about him - should research him a bit, before I do this post" and  in finding the links to Jeff Bezos,  I was STUNNED by the new information I found - the man is a mega version of  " myyown !"   

Since so many of my forebears have passed on, it is treat to find another of those who grew up with tech pioneers in their midsts.    Jeff Bezos does  things that my Dad, Brother or Husband or Children might do...and they all " do something" .  And talked and dreamed of more!   Wow!   I have since gotten some Audible publications about him, for more of the Jeff Bezos story.    It is clear he is doing so much because he CAN - it’s just who he is - his day’s work. 

It is still rewarding to a Mother, to see the Youngsters doing such miracles!  Widowed many  years ago , the children and I rallied well and It seemed mended now, but then an accident stopped me again;  again I rallied and this time with power and focus in the work and love …doing it.

I could do NONE of it without technology and folk like Amazon and its helpers - they are my virtual staff -  may this post “tip” them at the holiday.    So much of what was done by paid human help I get from tech now...floor robots , data processing,  instant purchases of things I need to do my life right - instant research and images and text to help my business, delivered to my computer or to my door with lightning speed.  Even when hurt in an accident, I got it all done because I could a morning's tasks in under an hour, online, and can, for at least another ten years - maybe twenty. 

Why, I could be the first octogenarian on the moon colony, via a future Amazon project!    - I DO have input for Mr Bezos to help and two projects if he'd like to take them up. Someone should.  For now AMAZING AMAZON IS PLENTY for the plate.  Thank you, truly, Amazon!