You will find moments in your past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in the early grades, a basic girl who, if she were alive, will not understand how during grade 4, she was pointing the right way to freedom of expression. You will find there’s lesson here which will come in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
We have often wondered if Anna’s life may have taken an alternative turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties once the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the aid of ink blotters in class. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in a mud-bath. It took us months to understand the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; if you wanted to save lots of time, you would be far wiser to try out the tortoise.
But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a way to Bali once we were stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when those of us with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she may find anything passionate than Japanese prints.
I remember Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God and that the writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon the way you control a lot of it.” There were anything more that would have to be controlled also, in accordance with Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down at the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna viewed her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a quick, thin line over Anna’s script; the blotter followed; there came more red lines, more words slashed away.
I watched Anna after she returned to her desk. She began writing, dabbing the blotter after her pen in true Sister Mary Michael fashion. For a while, it seemed as though Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I remarked that it turned out the blotter that’s absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a place in the top right-hand corner of the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the location and watched the darkness grow; several details together with the nib along with the blotch has been a little bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches around the absorbent paper plus much more dabs before entire blotter turned into some sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines on this occasion, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from one corner to another location; she paused just good enough to thicken the guts stretch without having to break the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths along with the blotter sat to be with her desk as being a chocolate web.
It turned out an early on version of Acid Art, so distinctive it made flowing hair stand on end. But Sister Mary Michael can’t quite see that.
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