There and then the promise would again be made that one day all these old schoolbooks would be gathered and sorted. These impromptu sessions transported me back into the world of To School through the Fields. Planning just a quick peep inside, I was still there half an hour later, steeped in memories. Occasionally when I was up there rummaging, I would come across one. All the books eventually found their way up into my attic with promises of: some day, some day!įor many years the old books remained stored away in the attic, gathering dust. He spent long hours teaching us one night he spent over an hour patiently trying to drum the spelling of immediately into my heedless head. He was a Hans Christian Andersen who loved children and had the patience of Job, so he was the ideal teacher and we loved him dearly. It was uncanny that here was a reminder of Bill, who, every night during our childhood, came down from his home on the hill behind our house and taught us our lessons. In the home place, my mother stored all our old schoolbooks up in a dark attic that was christened the black loft because in those pre-electricity days only faint rays of light penetrated its dusty depths under the sloping roof of our old farmhouse.Īmong them was a book that had belonged to our old neighbour Bill, who had gone to school with my father. So a deep drift of old schoolbooks was building up that would eventually swirl in my direction. My cousin Con, who became part of our family, was an extreme hoarder and brought all his old books with him when he came to live in our house. My husband Gabriel was another hoarder who kept his schoolbooks.
My mother was a hoarder and kept all our schoolbooks. These old books had come from family hoarders who had cherished and loved them for decades. Over the years they had crept silently up the steep, narrow stairs, gently eased open the creaking door, slipped in quietly and made themselves comfortable. They lay there quietly and patiently, hoping that one day I would get around to doing what was at the back of my mind for decades. For many years upstairs in my attic lay a collection old schoolbooks gathering dust.
0 kommentar(er)
