The Little Things

Little things - like what they do with their bits and pieces - can
tell you a lot about a person. They can tell you things that the big
things never tell. To us she had always been a strong woman, a woman
who liked the 'boys' best and had no time for daughters or
granddaughters. There was always something specially cooked for my dad
or my brother, but the clearing away and washing up for my mother and
me. The men could fall asleep like kings on the throne of her sofa
watching fuzzy zigzagging TV as we rinsed and polished the cutlery. She
had not thought of a name for my mum, as she had not wanted a girl. She
named her simply after the month in which she was born and left it at
that - no middle name. She had not wanted to see me as a baby because
perhaps again I had not been what she hoped for. But the week after my
grandmother died I opened a drawer in her kitchen to find it full of my
pictures and letters and stories. Here it was, the ferocious silence of
her love tenderly kept in the heart of her world.