*BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!*

Grace groaned and threw her hand out, fumbling around in the dark for the off button on her alarm clock. It took several long blaringly loud seconds for her to find said button and once silence and peace had been restored to her tiny bedroom she flopped onto her back and covered her face with her arm.

Five in the morning came way too early, especially when you had been up until two with a grandmother who seemed convinced her husband, who had worked nightshift in the coal mines and had been dead for fifteen long years, was going to be coming home in the night. Ester Collins was a eighty-three year old woman and her dementia was steadily getting worse.

Some days she was fine and she was the grandma that Grace could always remember her being and then some days she seemed lost in the past or she would suddenly be a small child again and get herself into trouble. Grace had been told by more than one person that she needed to put her grandmother into a nursing home but the thought of doing that always brought tears to her eyes.

Her grandmother had raised her from the age of five when her mother had changed her mind about parenthood one day and taken off. Ester had been mother and grandmother to Grace. She had taught her how to ride a bike, how to bake cookies and how to knit (though Grace was pretty well hopeless at the latter). Ester had helped her through her heartbreaks as a child and had always been there with a warm smile and a kind word when Grace had needed it. And now that her grandmother needed her, Grace was going to be there.

Grace blew out a long breath and forced herself to rise from the bed. She ran her hand through her unruly auburn hair and shuffled across the worn carpet of her bedroom and out onto the cool hardwood of the hallway. She didn’t turn any lights on for fear of disturbing her sleeping grandmother and daughter as she made her way to the kitchen and clicked on the coffee pot she had prepared the night before.

As the scent of her brewing caffeine boost filled the air, Grace went back to her room and turned on the morning news while she took her morning run on her treadmill. Then she showered, dressed in her jeans and t-shirt and had her first sips of coffee warming her blood by six.

She walked down the hall to her daughters room and knocked gently on the door before stepping inside. She stared down at her peaceful sleeping angel and thanked God yet again for her. She smoothed her blond hair from her brow and kissed her slumbering head.

“Mama?” Cadence whispered groggily and Grace smiled.

“It’s time to wake up, baby girl. We have to get you ready for school.”

“But I’m still sleepy.” Cadence mumbled as she rolled away and buried her nine year old face in the pillow. Grace laughed lightly and climbed into the bed, kissing her daughters hair and wrapping her arm tight around her.

“That’s because somebody stayed up late watching that princess movie on TV. I told you that you would be tired in the morning and you said you wouldn’t be.” Cadence turned her head and smiled brightly, though her eyes still weren’t open more than a crack.

“I’m not sleepy.” Grace laughed and tickled her ribs causing her to squeal and squirm in an attempt to get away from her.

“Well come on then, gremlin, we have to get you ready for school.”

“Mommy, can I have moo moo milk with my breakfast?” Cadence asked as Grace helped her from the bed.

“Of course you can.” Grace took Cadence to the bathroom and helped her shower and dry her hair. While most nine year olds could do these things themselves, Cadence was different. She had been born with what the doctors called mild mental retardation. Grace hated those words and instead simply chose to say her daughter was special. At the age of nine, Cadence had the mental capabilities of a five or six year old. The doctors were hopeful that she would improve with time, perhaps even get to a sixth grade level but Grace wasn’t too concerned about that.

Cadence was her miracle. Grace had only been nineteen when her daughter had been born and when Cadence was only three months old Grace’s boyfriend, Tyler, had decided he didn’t want to be a father and he had walked away without a single backward glance. Grace had not seen nor heard from him since. Of course she knew where he was since it was impossible to completely vanish in a place as small as south eastern Kentucky but she hadn’t attempted to contact him even once and he hadn’t attempted to contact her or his daughter either.

Grace had also refused to ask the man for a dime. Call it foolish pride but as far as she was concerned Tyler Hoffman’s money wasn’t good enough for her daughter. So Grace worked two jobs to support both her daughter and her grandmother. While Ester’s social security check helped a little it was barely enough to cover all of Ester’s doctor bills and medications.

Grace never complained though. She was just thankful to still have her grandmother and even more grateful to have her beautiful daughter.

While Cadence ate her pancakes and drank her chocolate milk, Grace went and got her grandmother up and out of the bed.

“I’m a grown woman, Grace, stop treating me like a child.” Ester scolded as she shuffled in her pink robe and slippers to the kitchen. Grace smiled, today was obviously one of her grandmother’s good days and she could leave her without worrying too much.

After ensuring that her grandmother had taken her medicine, and setting her up in the living room with her television, remote control, coffee and crossword puzzle, Grace and Cadence left the house. Grace made sure that Cadence got to her classroom safely and then headed into town. She parked her car in the city parking and walked down main street toward ‘The Grease Rag’ garage which was where she worked Monday through Friday.

She donned her blue jumpsuit, pulled her hair up in a scrunchy and after waving at her boss through his office window she got to work.

888

Grace left work at three and headed back to her car. She was starving after having worked through lunch to get an extra thirty minutes of pay. She was covered in grease and sweat, late august in the mountains was just plain hot. She hurried to the school, avoiding contact with anyone else along the way. She loved her small town community but around here there was no such thing as a short conversation and she didn’t have time for the long winded talk with anyone and that’s the only kind folks around here wanted to have.

They didn’t seem to understand that Grace had no time to stop. She had never had that kind of luxury… At least not since Cadence had been born. Grace drove to the school and picked up her daughter, swung by the store to pick up the things for dinner and to make cookies for the bake sale that was apparently happening at Cadence’s school tomorrow and then she drove them home with Cadence singing the newest song her music teacher was teaching to her the entire way.

Grace used her key to let herself in and then her jaw dropped as her purse and grocery bags clattered to the floor and Cadence went running into the kitchen laughing.

Grace looked around at the ropes strung throughout the room and the soaking wet shirts, pants, socks and underwear hanging from them and dripping on the cream colored linoleum tiles.

“Grandma!” she called out as she wove her way through the maze of dripping shirts and socks.

“I’m in here, dear.” her grandmother replied from the bathroom. Grace made her way into the bathroom to find her grandmother with the tub full of soapy water, washing clothes on the old washboard that Grace had had hanging in the laundry room.

“Grandma, what are you doing?” Grace whispered with a mixture of shock and horror as she thought of the mess she was going to have to clean up.

“I’m washing laundry of course.” Ester replied as she moved a strand of white hair from her face with the back of her age spotted hand.

“I can see that.” Grace admitted. “Why aren’t you using the washing machine?”

“Because it’s broke.” Ester said angrily. “I couldn’t get that damn contraption to work at all. Or that damn drier. Fire hazard is all that thing is.” Grace sighed and while she was exhausted and knew it would take her a good hour to clean this mess and the mess in the kitchen just so she could cook dinner, she couldn’t help but laugh.

She’d been told before that her sense of humor was a defense mechanism that she had developed to help her deal with the stress in her life and she figured that was probably right.

“Grandma, they’re not broken. You have to pull that knob out, remember? Did you pull the knob out?” Ester tried to push herself to her feet and Grace reached out and held onto her arm, pulling her up.

“Pull the knob out? What kind of idiot decided that would be a good idea?” she demanded angrily. Grace knew her temper was born of embarrassment and she reached in the cupboard and pulled out a towel.

“Dry yourself off, grandma.” she said handing the towel to the older woman. She grabbed an empty basket off the back of the toilet and went to the kitchen. She couldn’t help but laugh as she watched Cadence running back and forth through the wet clothes, laughing happily with every breath as she became soaking wet.

“You wanna help mommy get all these clothes in the basket so I can cook dinner?” Grace asked and Cadence nodded. It took them nearly an hour to get all the clothes from the kitchen and bathroom into the laundry room and get the floors dried. Grace sent Cadence to her room to put on some dry clothes as she went about cooking chicken tacos for dinner.

After dinner, Grace practiced numbers and spelling with Cadence for another hour before getting her in her pajamas and tucking her into bed with a story and a kiss.

Once that was done Grace helped her grandmother into her nightdress and into the bed. She made sure her grandmother’s remotes and water glass were all close enough she could reach them and then she kissed the old woman’s wrinkled cheek, smoothed her white hair and walked from the room.

She didn’t dare sit down on the tempting looking couch, knowing that if she did she would collapse there and never get up again until morning. Instead she went about baking the cookies for Cadence’s bake sale before washing the dishes from dinner and cleaning the kitchen. Then it was time to tidy up the living room and get a load of her grandmother’s freshly washed clothes into the dryer.

Finally she made her way to the bathroom. She laughed lightly when she realized she still had grease smudges on her face and in her hair. She turned on the hot water in the shower and slipped out of her clothes. As she stepped beneath the pounding water she felt every tired muscle in her body relax and she nearly melted into a puddle beneath the hot stream.

She finished her shower, put on her flannel pants and oversized t-shirt and checked on her sleeping grandmother and daughter before going to her own bed. This had simply been another day in her life and a fairly easy day at that. With both her grandmothers and her daughters illnesses you never knew how a day would go. It was nearly midnight when she was finally able to slide beneath her covers and she was fast asleep before her head had even hit her pillow.