Like most Americans, I complain about work; they don’t give us the tools, there’s not enough time, they make too many demands.
Unlike most Americans, I worked on Labor Day Monday, hoping to hoard my off days for more prestigious holidays further down the calendar.
How noble of me.
How it all pales to the real work that lies ahead for people trying to rebuild in the south.
For thousands, hundreds of thousands in places like Biloxi and Jackson and Gulfport and New Orleans, there are many real labor days ahead.
In just three states, there are probably half a million people displaced from their homes.
They all need food and shelter and clothing and hope that there is light somewhere down the dark road ahead.
It will take weeks for the flooding to subside in some areas, weeks more to claim the dead and deal with disease and just clear paths to get to the most battered areas.
There’s enough debris in some towns to fill landfills, debris currently too waterlogged to even burn.
It must all be cleared somehow, and it must all be removed, to somewhere.
It is at that point, perhaps months and months down the road, when the rebuilding can start.
Where do you begin to rebuild an entire town that took decades to construct? Do public buildings come before homes? Do better neighborhoods get rebuilt before the other classes?
Is your house a bigger priority to your family than my home is to mine?
And it’s not like you can just run down to the nearest Home Depot for that door hinge or sheet of drywall.
The Home Depot got swept away, too.
The people at work may not recognize me this week because I don’t feel much like complaining these days.
This Labor Day, my labors don’t seem all that bad.