Stopped In My Tracks
Feb. 9th, 2022 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI'm at a loose end. I go up to the spare room and confront the corner cupboard- which is full of family memorabilia. I decide to harden my heart.
I select a suitcase in which my maternal grandmother stashed junk that was too precious to throw away. The contents are miscellaneous. There's a wooly collar off a lady's coat. (Was it kept in case it came in useful later or did it once belong to someone very dear?) There's a bag full of the amputated tails of furry animals- mink? stoat?- which sickens me rather. There are photographs, including one or two of me as a little boy (wasn't I sweet!) There are letters.
My grandmother seems to have kept every letter ever sent to her. As Ailz remarked, There was a tiume- before email- when everybody did. I pick up a clump of them and riffle through, thinking "bonfire", but an airmail letter posted in Berkeley, California catches my eye. Who's it from? Oh, only the wife of the novelist C.S. Forester. "Cecil," it says, "Is working on some new Hornblower stories and you may have heard about the film "The Pride and the Passion" that is being shot in Spain..." And I stop thinking "bonfire" and instead start thinking,"There are three alternatives (1) burn the lot unread, or (2) go through them carefully line by line or (3) put them back in the suitcase with the coat collar and the stoat tails and save them against a day when I'm feeling braver and less sentimental." I choose the final option. Of course I do...
I can remember my granny talking about Dorothy Forester but whether she was a relative or just a friend I really don't know....
I select a suitcase in which my maternal grandmother stashed junk that was too precious to throw away. The contents are miscellaneous. There's a wooly collar off a lady's coat. (Was it kept in case it came in useful later or did it once belong to someone very dear?) There's a bag full of the amputated tails of furry animals- mink? stoat?- which sickens me rather. There are photographs, including one or two of me as a little boy (wasn't I sweet!) There are letters.
My grandmother seems to have kept every letter ever sent to her. As Ailz remarked, There was a tiume- before email- when everybody did. I pick up a clump of them and riffle through, thinking "bonfire", but an airmail letter posted in Berkeley, California catches my eye. Who's it from? Oh, only the wife of the novelist C.S. Forester. "Cecil," it says, "Is working on some new Hornblower stories and you may have heard about the film "The Pride and the Passion" that is being shot in Spain..." And I stop thinking "bonfire" and instead start thinking,"There are three alternatives (1) burn the lot unread, or (2) go through them carefully line by line or (3) put them back in the suitcase with the coat collar and the stoat tails and save them against a day when I'm feeling braver and less sentimental." I choose the final option. Of course I do...
I can remember my granny talking about Dorothy Forester but whether she was a relative or just a friend I really don't know....
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-10 11:06 am (UTC)My mother and father- from these disparate bloodlines- were aspiring middle class- and my upbringing was in conformity with that.