On this weekend of Labor Day it is fitting, I think, to remind you that I labored to bring our daughters into the world. And once they joined us on this earth, I continued to labor. Hearth. Heart. Home. Strawberry fields--or at least a small rectangle of sweet red fruit in our front yard. Every day for weeks a mixing bowl full I served to us, and to family, friends, and the attorneys you occasionally brought home and propped at our dining room table. Then came grapefruits and oranges. Plums and pomegranates. Loquats and guavas. But you'd tired of our eden by then. Still--I marinated chickens, squeezed lemonade, and with the same hope, I pressed the juice from our our lives. Let it be sweet, I prayed. Not saccharine. For us--only the real.I planted roses. I planted trees. I planted hope, and I watered it. Kept it alive--in drought years, with carefully rationed tears. Kept us alive as long as I could.
But you've let so many things die.
My pension was in those plums. My retirement in roses. My 401-K wrapped round and round a sun that, at present, shines only on the bright planet of you.
What I ask of you is this: Divide what bounty remains. As the sun tires of its labors this holiday weekend, promise me half of the fools' gold that glitters in the night sky of our lives.
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