Labor Day

This day is set aside to celebrate the working class of our nation, as well as a day to cease our labors for rest and relaxation.

I don’t understand the concept rest and take it easy. It has never happened that way for me the first Monday in September. At least, it has not happened very much since I began raising children.

It certainly hasn’t happened often since I began shoring up a spouse with ADHD.

Not that I am complaining - much. I love Husband. I love memories from previous Labor Days when the children were small.

I remember the year I hanged freshly-washed laundry on the clothes line. Husband called to me from the backyard, “I am going to smoke this steak for dinner today.”  It was one activity he enjoyed, so it was the one activity on his list for the day.

“Hey, wait. I just put those clothes on the line. The smoker stands next to it. Wait until they are dried before you light the wood.

“Too late,” he called again.

I made the mad scramble to bring the clothes indoors.

Other Labor Days we mostly puttered around in the yard or prepared food for visits from extended family.

We didn’t do much in the way of neglected chores, even though our house was that one house on the block. You know the one where the trim needed repair or paint. Other minor, copulatory chores reproduced during the darkest hours of night, and neighbors talked about us behind our backs.

One was brave enough to say it to my face, ”Rather than helping others through your church, you should stay home and take care of the repairs on your own place.”

I merely groaned inward. She had no idea. In addition to caring for my children, keeping house, mowing the lawn, and working part time as a freelance writer, I had not the time or skill to get the other things done; neither did I have the money.

Doing all I was capable of accomplishing, I certainly did not have the emotional strength to push Husband into action or force him to spend his money.

“If they had only known, or even if I had known what I do now,” I sigh.

My husband was not going to be the one who cared what others thought nor was he sensitive to my need for tidiness. He was oblivious to it all, and he didn’t intend to change.

This particular neighbor’s husband mowed the grass, repaired fences, took care of the car, and took out the trash without needing to be prompted, coerced, or reminded. She had no clue.

Families without ADHD do not understand. The spouse of the person with ADHD is often in turmoil because things do not get done. Whether it is a wife or husband with ADHD, the spouse agonizes over the incompletes.

It is a constant nag at the back of the mind. It is far from rest or ceasing to strife.

Of course none of the neighbors had the courage to speak to Husband directly. They came to me with the mistaken notion that I could make him get things done.

“Ha! If I knew how to do that, I could patent the notion and make a million,”   I often thought.

Being ever-optimistic, I hoped the Labor Day cooler temperatures and the prospect of a new school year would motivate Husband into action.

Every year I dreamed for that.

Now that we have grown older, I hope for Husband to get out of bed before 10 a.m. on Labor Day and to do something other than sit in front of the TV when he does.

I continue to hope for that.

He has the retirement concept down to an art. He has no problem with the concept of rest and cease from labor, and on this Labor Day, one of us continues to labor and the other continues to rest and relax.