There are moments inside our past that shape our vision. Experiencing my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna noisy . grades, a quiet girl who, if she remained alive, doesn’t recognize how during grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There exists a lesson here which comes in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
I have often wondered if Anna’s life might have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades in the sixties in the event the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed if you use ink blotters in school. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience right into a mud-bath. It took us months to find out the skill of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you really wanted in order to save time, choosing far wiser to play the tortoise.
But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring ways to Bali if we remained stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she might find nothing at all passionate than Japanese prints.
From the Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God knowning that the actual writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends upon the method that you control the ink.” There were anything more that must be controlled at the same time, in accordance with Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down with the child, her eyes blue and difficult above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna viewed her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew an easy, 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 some time, it seemed as though Anna had learnt her lesson. When I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it was the blotter which was absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a place on the top right-hand corner with the sheet; she stuck the nib in the heart of the spot and watched the darkness grow; a few details with the nib along with the blotch has been a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches for the absorbent paper and more dabs until the entire blotter changed into a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to the next; she paused just long enough to thicken the middle stretch without breaking the flow until the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths along with the blotter sat on her desk as being a chocolate web.
It had been a young sort of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made your hair climb onto end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite note that.
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