BLUE MONDAY — March 15, 2010 by Dolores Ayotte

QUOTES AND ANECDOTES

“The highest of distinction is of service to others.”  (King George VI)

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A WOMAN’S VOICE 

BLUE MONDAY- My Mother’s Voice (Nettie Gauthier)

Today I am taking some of the same creative liberty that Jeannette Walls did in Half Broke Horses when she wrote her book speaking in the first person using her grandmother’s voice.  Although I won’t  be doing quite that, I am writing this blog on behalf of my mom. All my other guests will write their own.

I will take the opportunity to share a little about my mom with you. I feel so fortunate because my mother will be eighty-nine years old at the end of the month. This picture of her was taken in November, 2009.  I’m starting with my mom out of deference and respect.  Her voice was the first voice I ever heard.  The rest of the voices will be random. 

When I was young, after the weekend when my dad returned to work and my siblings and I went to school, my mom would say that it was “blue Monday”.  She felt we were getting back to our weekly routine and the grind of daily living.  As a young girl, I never realized what the daily grind was to her on these “blue Mondays” until I became an adult.

I come from a family of six children which was no big deal in my day.  We lived in a war time home which was about 800 square feet with no basement.  Every Monday, my mom would pull out the wringer washing machine and push it to the kitchen sink. She would then wash one tub full of clothes after the other all day long. One time she actually caught her arm in the wringer. She only washed clothes on Monday.  All winter long she would almost freeze her fingers off as she hung those clothes on the line outside.  No automatic dryers in those days!  When she brought them in the house at the end of the day they would be as stiff as boards but smell as fresh as daisies.  I remember loving the smell of those frozen clothes.

You know what strikes me the most as I look back?  I never once heard her complain.  I guess Mondays were very hard for her because she frequently referred to them as “blue Mondays”.  It was as if my mom had almost “no voice” at all as she went about her routine day after day, and week after week. She was too busy to have much to say.  Perhaps “blue Monday” said it all.  What do you think?  Do you feel the same way about Mondays?

On Monday, March 22, I will be featuring my first guest blogger, my daughter, Andrea Cockerill.  Please don’t miss the wonderful article she’s written for A Woman’s Voice.

If you are interested in being a guest blogger, please contact me at my e-mail address:

doloresayotte@shaw.ca

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