Weary Days

The rest of the family is sleeping. The rain is making it's steady music on our flat roof and the cloths dryer is humming to itself complacently. I've got the start of a little cold in my nose and throat and am wondering how bad it's going to be.

I'm as tired now from work as I can ever remember being when I worked with my body. I'll be asleep soon I'm sure. My head is tired - probably too tired even to dream.

I think about my grandmothers more and more these days when I'm this weary. I think of their efforts to raise their families alone; I think with wonder that they did raise their families alone. I think of the tender wariness when they watched me as a boy.

"When I was a girl the horses walked in the streets of Fall River - do you know that Davey?"

I can still hear Nana's voice telling me of her chores and her work in the shoe factories and her admiration for my fiery great aunt Emily - her sister - who knew just how to put the cat calling factory boys in their place.

"We were always together," she told me, "we never walked alone."

My grandmothers were my link to a time before my own time as a child. Now they are a link to a time that is my own past. Their memory gives me confidence that I can raise my family, that I can do what must be done - and succeed.

I've just set a cup of lemon tea to steep with some honey. I'm hoping that and a little vitamin C gummy bear (my daughter's) will help stave off this cold. I hope tomorrow I'll feel better.

But I'm sure I'll get through tomorrow sick or no - I never have to walk alone.

Good night.