Bad Days

Bad Days

"A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary."

-- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Most days she thinks that things well end well. Most days, she grits her teeth and bears it because in the end it will all have been worthwhile. In the end, there will be calm, and stillness, and giggling at silly jokes. Most days, she does it because she wants it to be over. She wants there to be a "something else". Most days, she thinks we'll all come away from this and be happy again.

Some days, the bad days, she doesn't. The bad days she wades through time that is thick and heavy with pointlessness, and she can't let herself wonder what will happen later. The bad days, she has to stop herself from looking around at the faces beside her, because her mind will began to picture them with closed eyes in dark boxes. The bad days, she does what needs to be done only because it's there.

Arthur doesn't pray. She didn't used to either, but she can't seem to not, these days. She prays for little things because she's afraid to ask for the big things. She prays that Ron does well on his N.E.W.T.'s, and that Harry manages to have a nice birthday. She prays that Fred and George's silly shop does well, and that Percy comes home for Christmas.

If she asked for the big things - life, victory, happiness - then she will have run through her last option. She's never been one for numbers - Arthur was always better with sums and figures - but at night, on the bad nights, she lies awake and she runs through the odds, remembering the last war. Eight children in this war. Seven with red heads and one with dark hair and a head full of Fate.

The odds were grim, and she lay up nights waiting for frantic owls in late-night windows bearing letters she remembered watching others get so long ago, when she was still young. Arthur tries to comfort her, but sometimes she wonders if he has bad days the way that she does. He's so hopeful, so sure. Molly wishes she were more like that, some days. She wants to wish that she had raised children who wouldn't stand and fight - but even now, she couldn't wish that her children were any different. With all their flaws - improper earrings, and foolish allegiances, and perpetual trouble making, and leather trousers and a hundred other things she harped and nagged about - they were hers. She and Arthur's greatest contribution to this world was their children. She wished she didn't know that in the end, they would be their greatest contribution to the war effort, too.

The bad days, she can't stop herself from thinking. The mantra runs over and over in her head until it's all she can hear and on the bad days if feels like a truth she can't avoid. She pictures red heads or green eyes and weighs the odds of which will be lowered into the ground. Mothers aren't meant to outlive their children - but she will.