Labor Day - Times are Changing.

My dad was a plumber.  I was the last of five children and grew up in a house of older siblings, a home office, vendors, customers, friends, neighbors, and strangers coming in and out of our house constantly.  I have zillions of memories of holiday dinners where the table would be set, we had all just gathered to sit, and the office phone would ring and my dad would have to leave to help someone even before the first bite was taken.

He was a master plumber, a mason, constantly in the local paper, hard worker, and basically a stranger.  He was married to his profession and it was what he did best in life.   He could literally fix, lift, and source anything. We were not allowed to say "can't" growing up and we were told a million times how easy we had it in life and didn't know the true meaning of hard work.

My dad was born in 1929.  His mother died when he was five and was sent to live and work on a Polish farm while times were tough.  The Polish influence trickled into my life through language, food, and music. Oh and did I tell you that it wasn't uncommon to see my dad dance the polka at family weddings?  That's another story.  He had a hard life born from the Great Depression, loosing a parent, and being part of a mixed family with all boys yet he never gave up until the very end.  All of this created a personal belief for my dad that unless you were working physically hard and getting the job done with your hands, you were not working at all.  My brother went to school for engineering and in my dad's eyes it wasn't good enough.  He wanted my brother to follow in his footsteps and takeover the family business.  My brother had his own dreams and they had nothing to do with plumbing.

When I turned 18 and it was my turn to decide what I was going to be when I grew up and my Dad was already 59 years old.  Being the 5th born, and the 4th daughter, he had long given up on the idea that the family business would be taken over and his legacy continued.  My dad had also given up on life and had withdrawn from the world as most of us know it.  I was left as an impressionable 18 year old taking it upon myself to decide whether or not to go to college,  what I should study, and where I wanted to end up in life.  I knew that anything I chose would not fit in with my Dad's way of thinking and his thoughts about what my life should look like. Twenty years later, my Dad has been gone for most of the time and I'm knee deep in a career that my Dad never even knew existed.  It's Labor Day and most of the country has the day off and is celebrating a holiday that most of us don't know the story behind the day.

Times are changing.  There are new industries being created everyday and people's ideas about labor and what it means to work hard are expanding.  People work hard everyday without getting their hands dirty and I applaud them but on this Labor Day my thoughts go out to all the people that work hard everyday like my Dad did.  They work 12 hour plus days, physically grueling, and mentally taxing jobs to make all of our lives run smoothly and without interruptions.   They build our roads, keep our water running, clear our garbage, manufacture our goods, farm our lands, maintain our buildings, and serve our country.  While many of us make our living creating new business and creating new vision, my hat off to so many who like my Dad contribute to society by getting their hands dirty and using a little elbow grease.