Prayer, Persistence & Pluck

There are moments when certain memories just pop into my head. Memories of my childhood, which, truth be told, was a challenging time.

Those memories all concern my family, and how much crap my Mother had to endure trying to keep us all alive, and healthy, and on the straight and narrow.

For those not in the know, my Mother raised me and my five siblings alone - my father bailed just before my second birthday.

Against incalculable odds, my Mother was able to keep all of us together, kept all of us from hurting ourselves or each other, at least physically, and managed to do so without having to resort to using anything but prayer, persistence, and, for lack of a better word, pluck. 

But mostly it was the persistence.

She persisted in pushing all of us to try harder every day to be better than the world around us, and to become better than people thought we could ever possibly be.

She persisted in her belief that we would not be victims of our environment or circumstances, that we could and would create better lives for ourselves.

And so we did, each and every one of us.

Thanks, Mom.