Great grandpa was a newsboy who marked suspect vans for the Irish republicans, then a tailor who fought for them. When he broke great grandma out of the laundry and stowed away to NY, his trained hands could find work only behind the wheel of a city bus. He found a new peace with his family, sewing my grandma’s pockets shut to make her walk with confidence, but he sent a portion of his paycheck back to the army until the day he died.
This isn’t his, and I don’t think he’d approve of it. Still, I feel close to him every time I mend a new pinhole.
