Status Updates From Small Things Like These

"What was it all for?Furlong wondered.The work&the constant worry.Getting up in the dark&going to the yard, making the deliveries,one after another,the whole day long,then coming home in the dark&trying to wash the black off himself&sitting into a dinner at the table&falling asleep before waking in the dark to meet a version of the same thing,yet again.Might things never change or develop into something else,or new?"

"‘The years don’t slow down any as they pass.’"

"Mrs Wilson had rubbed the top of his head and praised him, as though he was one of her own. ‘You’re a credit to yourself,’ she’d told him. And for a whole day or more, Furlong had gone around feeling a foot taller, believing, in his heart, that he mattered as much as any other child."

"Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come."

"He’d had moments, in his marriage, when he’d almost feared Eileen and had envied her mettle, her red-hot instincts."

"It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind."

"Before going back into the house, he’d washed his face at the horse-trough, breaking the ice on the surface, pushing his hands down deep in the cold and keeping them there, to divert his pain, until he could no longer feel it."

"Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?"

"But it cut him, all the same, to see one of his own so upset by the sight of what other children craved and he could not help but wonder if she’d be brave enough or able for what the world had in store."

I don’t trust those nuns