At the Library
I walked halfway home after my ‘Stories On Saturday’ launch, before I realised I’d left my water bottle and packet of tissues on the mantel piece at Ledbury Library. When I returned to the children’s room, I found an encouraging number of children and parents choosing library books.
I spoke to one of the librarians on my way out, who told me families often came in late-morning on a Saturday. We stood under the library banners, talking and thinking, thinking and talking. We wondered about the possibility of postponing my ‘Stories On Saturday’ session for a later start than 10 am, but I felt a real reluctance to interrupt this special time for families to explore the bookshelves together.
With a Friend
I said farewell and walked out into the sunshine again. I walked round to the back of the library with a heavy heart and a pervading sense of failure. My eyes began to fill with tears, but I held them back and phoned a friend.
Many, many moons ago, my friend Lizzie gave me an old copy of Peter H. Reynold’s picturebook, ‘The Dot’. The first page was torn out before it was withdrawn from Swansea Library in January 2005. I have treasured it since the day it was lovingly placed into my hands.
Lizzie was an excellent early years teacher. She also found she could no longer work in schools. We have both been following the advice given to the book’s main character, Vashti:
“Make a mark and see where it takes you.”
Lizzie retrained as a painter and decorator about ten years ago and has been transforming homes in the three counties ever since.
When I rang, she was in her back garden picking walnuts,
“Come straight over. I’ll put the kettle on.”
We sat together at her kitchen table, drinking tea, cracking walnuts, thinking and talking, talking and thinking.
Through a Library Book
When I reached home, I pulled up the drawbridge for the day and curled up in a chair to continue reading Michael Rosen’s memoir, ‘So They Call You Pisher?’, which I read to the end.
I made a definite connection with Connie Rosen on page 200 and felt as if I was looking in a mirror somehow.
‘There was another way the subject of education itself got to me: Mum’s progress with her Diploma in Education was now preoccupying her in ways that none of us had seen before. She would spend hours staring into the middle distance, or scribbling little notes in files. One time I got in from school and thought the house was empty. All the lights were out, but when I walked into the kitchen I saw that she was there, sitting in the dark, pondering on something. She started to formulate these thoughts into aphorisms and gnomic sayings which she shared with Harold, who seemed to know what they meant, or she just threw them into the air for anyone to catch…
Out of the blue, related to nothing else, she’d say, ‘It’s all about doing and talking.’
Or: ‘Talking, thinking; thinking, talking.’
Or: ‘Thinking and doing – that’s it.”
‘SO THEY CALL YOU PISHER? A Memoir’ by Michael Rosen
That search for meaning, that quest for clarity, that longing to find a way where there seems to be no way. My husband often tells me, “Your face is all screwed up!” as I stare into space trying to make meaning from the tangled thread of my thoughts – often recorded in countless scribbled notes. “Mum’s buffering again!” is a phrase my children and husband use when I stop speaking mid-sentence. (But that probably says more about my menopausal brain fog than anything else…)
Thinking, talking, doing,
Thinking, talking, doing,
Thinking, talking, doing…
Don’ t you think Connie Rosen’s words are universal and relate to us all, children and adults alike?
We are created to think.
We are created to talk.
We are created to act.
Don’t you think there’s a pressing need for more of this kind of collaborative and constructive work among us?
