Dear Mr. President,
I totally get it. I know that full-time workers deserve a break. We work really hard, week after week, month after month, year after year, helping our great country stand tall with the other countries of the world. It’s really nice to have Labor Day to remind us that we’re appreciated and honored. I love getting a day off just as much as the next person.
The problem is that Labor Day isn’t also Parent Labor Day.
We just started the school year, and I just packed these boys off to school, and now you’re sending them back home to me on my holiday? That’s not a holiday. Can I please go to work instead?
I miss my kids when they’re in school. I really do. But not enough to spend a holiday with them just eight days after school started in the first place. Not enough to deal with the mess they can make in 30 seconds of being awake. (See Exhibit A, below.)
This is my dining room table. We don’t eat here, because kids and hands don’t mix with a glass-top table (I know. We bought it before we had kids.). But still. This is the first thing you see when you walk through the doors of our home. This happened because my school boys get Labor Day as a holiday, too.
Does this look like a good Labor Day holiday? Maybe for them. Not for me.
You’re probably thinking that maybe I should have just taken them out of the house for the holiday, and you’re probably right. The problem is, everything’s closed. Go to the closest national park (or any park), because they’re always open? It’s still a thousand degrees here in Texas, and we all turn into red-faced monsters when we’re outside sweating just from sitting. Take them shopping? No thanks. I’d rather do a hundred burpees. Plan fun activities with them? Well, the 8-year-old thought he’d take care of that himself, and now we have backyard dirt, unidentified hair and some kind of dead bug on the kitchen table because he wants to look at them under the microscope. I’d say that’s enough fun for one day.
So. Labor Day holiday? I beg to differ. My living room looks like a Pattern Play and puzzle explosion, the dining room table makes me want to cry, and let’s not even mention the kitchen table. *Shudder* On top of all that, the refrigerator is hanging on by a vine of grapes, because the kids are home and it’s never, ever closed when kids are home. (They’re going to regret it when they go back to school tomorrow and there’s nothing to eat in their lunches.)
So I’d like to propose that next Labor Day we make it a Parent Labor Day, too. Parents get to spend the whole holiday without their kids. We’re never off the clock when we’re a parent, so a holiday would be nice. We’re raising the future laborers, after all. We deserve a holiday from the work.
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
A very tired parent whose Labor Day really was a labor day, except way, way, waaaaaaaaay harder than work.
