invisible labor

from the afterlife by donald antrim

"most all of my mother's stories - the angry tales she told me, before and after she got sober - about her life with my father contained, i think, a notion of self-improvement as a process of gathering insights into other people: if we name the faults of those who have hurt us, we will be shielded from pain; if we can collect evidence to justify our anger, we will overcome shame; if we pity our betrayers, we will not have been betrayed, mishandled, misunderstood, or left abandoned. but what happens when the ordeal of abandonment is - as i think it was for my mother, and for me with her - life itself?"

"nonetheless i was attracted by my grandfather's patience, by the care he took with this broken house. it wasn't that i suddenly understood the value in a job well done. far from it. it was that for a moment - a romantic moment destined to resonate and grow in magnitude over the years - i hoped (and this may have been a fantasy that i wanted to have about the man) that my grandfather had something to pass on to me, to teach me. and i imagined (because it did not occur to me to ask him) that what he had to teach me concerned the beauty in labor that is invisible to others, work that seems superfluous but isn't, and that no one except the worker will see or even necessarily appreciate."