May Day

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and today is May 1, and in many parts of the world today is celebrated as May Day.

May Day is an ancient spring festival, involving dancing around the maypole, singing and eating cake.

I’m thinking it must be a big deal if it involves cake.

In olden times towns and villages would celebrate the coming of spring on this date. Most farmers had already planted their crops by May 1 so it was a day the laborers could have off from work to celebrate the end of a long, cold winter, and the promise of more pleasant days to follow.

May has always been my favorite month. My work load begins to ease in May and my hours worked per week begin to decline.  Most importantly, May brings with it the anticipation of the arrival of summer.

I have always been a boy of summer.

That is reason enough to celebrate May 1. May Day.

There is also another Mayday. One that, unfortunately, I am becoming more and more aware of.

Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal. It is used primarily by sailors and pilots, and always said three times for emphasis (Mayday, Mayday, Mayday). It comes from the French word m’aidez which means “help me.”

There have been plenty of times in the last year, since my wife Terry was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, that I wanted to call out Mayday-Mayday-Mayday. In the last 12 months there has been plenty of distress. Plenty of times when I didn’t think I was going to make it. Plenty of times when I asked the Good Lord to “help me.”

May Day has also become the International Workers’ Day, a day to celebrate not only the hard work performed all year long but the eight hour work day. The balance of eight hours of working, eight hours of sleeping and eight hours of leisure. It commemorates the Haymarket affair, which occurred in Chicago 130 years ago, a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight hour day that turned violent.

May 1 is also the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker, a carpenter, and the Catholic patron saint of all workers.

My wife Terry has worked for over 30 years in a variety of jobs. When we first got married she taught a 6am aerobics class at the local YMCA. For the life of me I could not figure out why people would pay to take a fitness class at that ungodly hour. I was happy that Terry got paid to lead that class, however.

That job grew into a full time job at the “Y” working with youngsters, teaching gymnastics to toddlers. “Gym-Jam” it was called.

That was the greatest job for us. The “Y” was right down the street and with the free day care they had, our two oldest kids practically grew up at the “Y”. It was a great atmosphere for them and the day care room was literally right across the hall from the gym that Terry called her office.

During the summer Terry ran the YMCA summer Day Camp. Basically she got paid to play with kids outside all summer. Again, it was great for her and our kids.

But all good things have to come to an end sooner or later. Terry was so well liked at the “Y” and did such a good job that they promoted her, to a different “Y” and to a different job, one that involved more money but also more responsibilities. It was also a job that she did not enjoy.

After the “Y” Terry at different times taught physical education and a computers course at a grade school, she was a postal carrier (what we used to call a Mailman before the age of political correctness), a grade school athletics director and a track & field coach, and later worked at the shopping mall at a Sears. (She never could find out for me what the people at Sears ever did with Roebuck)

For the past several years she has worked in a doctor’s office where they help people lose weight and keep the weight off. The running joke in the office is that Terry is the “after” picture in the “before and after”, since she weighs in at a whopping 102 pounds.

But I am afraid Terry’s working days are coming to an end. She can no longer perform the duties she once was hired to do. She is now limited to working one day a week, about five hours each Friday. Most of the responsibilities she once had are tasks she can no longer perform.  Her cognitive impairment prevents her from performing them.

The worst part about Terry not working is not the lack of income, but the lack of input. Getting out of the house and interacting with others is so good for her. The brain is a muscle and it needs to be exercised. Working was very good for Terry.

On the plus side, not working will give Terry more time with me during the summer.

From the end of August until the end of May I cannot take any vacation (except for emergencies) due to my heavy work schedule and since I’ve been at this present job for 34 years, I have compiled quite a few vacation days. So during the summer, to make up for my lack of weekends during the year, I take Fridays and Mondays off.  

For the past few summers Monday has been our beach day. The Jersey Shore (not the one with Snooki and the Situation or any of the other low-lifes in that MTV reality show but the Atlantic Ocean) is only an hour’s drive from our front door to the beach, so we make that commute every Monday that we can.  We don’t ever go to the Shore on weekends, though. What was it that the great orator Yogi Berra once said about a restaurant he used to frequent? “Nobody ever goes there anymore, it is always too crowded.”

So on this May Day, while others are honoring the working class and celebrating the arrival of spring, Terry is slowly bringing her working career to a close.  It is just another thing on the list of things that Terry can no longer do. It is sad, but something we saw coming.

Hopefully, with her lack of working we will be able to enjoy the upcoming spring and summer months more. We always have in the past, and we don’t know how many more we will have in the future.

Until next time, hope you had a great May Day, and have no reason to cry out mayday, mayday, mayday.

Bud