STRONG WOMEN

 
I've posted this WWII photo before but thought it appropriate for International Women's Day because these are the strong women I grew up around and influenced my life. Starting with my mother who's holding me in her arms, a woman who faced every challenge with courage and love. Then from the viewer's left, my Irish immigrant Grandma Lally who lived down the street and always touched my heart with her kindness and humor. Next to her my great-aunt Allie who lived with us in her last years, an independent "career woman" who was the book buyer for a big department store and introduced me to my love of reading through the books she gave me and who, I found out after she was gone, had lived, unmarried, with a Jewish man in Manhattan in the 1920s. On my mother's right is her mother, my Grandma Dempsey who moved in with us not long after this photo was taken, a tough "crippled" woman who I never saw show fear, and on my left my Aunt Peggy who lived down the street and would sing or dance or play the piano whether she knew the tune or the notes or not, and my Aunt Mary, who lived next door and was the only Irish Protestant in the family and took no guff from anyone. I adored them all and feared a few and am eternally grateful for their lasting presence in my heart and life.