Reunited

A struggling family

Reunited

 

Reunited, two years later

A family broken up.

 

The kids are getting big now. She makes me proud, what a strong, young, intelligent woman she has become. The littler one is as cute as a button.

 

We don’t talk of their mother, rest her soul. A sadness resonates in all of us at the table.

 

I look to my mother and I see my sister’s face in an aged, beautiful woman. She sends me a fake smile across the table. I can tell she is worn and torn. I always fear I am the cause.

 

We eat our meal. There is not much conversation. There is banter among the children. They are enjoying themselves.

 

We are all struggling these days, just separately, the children in their new home and my mother and her children in separate homes.

 

It is time to pay the check. I hold my mother’s arm and she is shaky on her feet these days, eighty years young and nine children later, one deceased. I see the pain and worry in her face, a lifetime of struggle, trying to keep a family together.