Labor of love

Our son CJ will gladly tell you how old he is: "Twooooo!" That is, when he isn't lying and saying he's "sixteen" because he wants to drive a car.

When I was a kid, I didn't even know what Labor Day was. Kids don't labor, so it is easy to miss the point. I always associated the holiday with my paternal grandfather's Sept. 2 birthday; he would have been 101 yesterday.

On Labor Day 1995, I met my husband, Ben, at a picnic in George Wyth State Park. I was invited by my friend, John, with whom I edited the public display of immaturity that was the “teen section” of our local newspaper. (I'm sure it is long defunct; what teenager reads a newspaper these days? I'm pretty sure most teenagers didn't read the newspaper in 1995, either.) Ben was wearing mesh wrestling shorts, a tank top, and was seated at a picnic table hugging a cooler of long-necked green glass Mountain Dew bottles. I never actually learned his real name as everyone was calling him “Guns” (not because he was a gun nut but because he had large arms and his last name rhymed with the word). When another mutual friend asked if he could have one of the coveted Mountain Dews, I believe Ben told him no way and called him a $&%*face. Then, he immediately turned to me and offered me a bottle, so I guess I wasn’t a $&%*face. What more evidence did you need that we were a match made in heaven? Ahhh, teenage romance.

Sixteen years later, on Labor Day 2011, I was in the hospital in Des Moines. I had spent the whole weekend knowing how I was going to spend Labor Day: in labor. The doctors had told me the previous Friday that they needed to induce my labor at 37 weeks because of elevated blood pressure, so at 6:26 p.m. that Monday evening, three weeks before his expected arrival, the love story came full circle with the birth of our wonderful son, C.J.

His birthdate is September 5, but because he was born on the holiday we will likely celebrate that day every year for the rest of our lives. So we had a 2nd birthday party yesterday. There was Twinkie cake. Yard games. Balloons that CJ desperately wanted me to remove from the chandelier for him to play with. And after we sang him two verses of "Happy Birthday to You" and he blew out his big "2" candle, he had a humble request: "Again?"

It was a great day to celebrate, and here's to many more Labor Days together with our goofball family!