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children– “no boys, well we can’t have everything, can we dear?”
The endless cycle of wiping the tables, mopping the floors, fluffing
up pillows, scrubbing dirt out of shirts, watering down stew so
there was enough food on the table… sometimes it seemed too
much to bear.
Her hands –once the soft hands that used to love curling around
a pencil during class, the soft hands that picked up a dirty shirt for
the first time and plunged it into a tub of murky water –were no
longer smooth and untouched. Anne looked down at her hands,
resting on her lap, dry and wrinkled and scarred. She could feel a
tear forming in the corner of her eye, and she would have let it
dribble down her cheek had she not heard a burst of laughter in the
distance.
Celia
! she thought, and managed to blink away the tears before
the little girl came into view. Celia was wearing a little pink frock,
daisies curling around her locks of hair. When she saw Anne sitting
there, her face lit up and her blue eyes sparkled.
“Granny!” she cried and raced up to the porch. Behind Celia,
Anne could see Charlotte, her daughter, walking up. Though
Charlotte certainly lacked Celia’s bright energy, she wasn’t quite
tired either.
Celia gently lifted Anne’s hands and sat on Anne’s lap, wrapping
her grandmothers’ arms around her.
“Granny,” she said, eyes sparkling, “Mother and I have had the
most marvellous day! We went to the park and had ice cream, and
then she bought me this book– look, I wanted to show you!”
Anne could feel the soft wind go through her. She could hear
Celia’s voice, reading in the slow, hesitant way that children read,
index finger under each individual word. It was getting late – the
birds were flying away for the night, and she could see the evening’s
first, sparkling star.
‘
In Hindsight
10