As I continue to dig into old records, I find hand-written material– some typed–dating back to the late 1950s.  My three sons were two years apart, and I was fascinated with their reports–verbal or written–from school and from their interchage with each other.  I find that I also recorded their complaints about food, records of family outings–and, probabloy, most important for a writer–words about my attitude, my concerns, feelings about all this.  Goodness!  I must have put a run on the 5 & 10's supply of pencils.

Although it will not be saleable writing, as I anticipate it now, I will copy some of this hand-written stuff and send it to the sons for whom it is pertinent.  Youngest boy came home from play one day with a cricket in a jar.  He had named it "Man's Best Friend," for no reason I could determine.  The middle son who had been proud of the fact that he was among the top readers in one reading group at school, now had been advance to the next higher reading group and found himself at the bottom.  He did not want to be there. Their father, a newly-licensed pilot, took the three boys on a flying tour in his Cessna.  At this time, I look back and wonder that I had such confidence that I did not protest–those most precious lives bundled together for possible disaster.  (I never have liked to fly!)

One anecdote is worth an essay now. The first day the youngest attended pre-school at age 2 1/2, he did a painting on the school's easle.  His next older brother, then still in the same pre-school, proudly exclaimed in showing off little brother's work:  "Look, Greg painted the inside of a whirlwind."   It was certainly an apt description, and one I am turning into an essay today.  Until tomorrow, Willma

As I continue to dig into old records, I find hand-written material– some typed–dating back to the late 1950s.  My three sons were two years apart, and I was fascinated with their reports–verbal or written–from school and from their interchage with each other.  I find that I also recorded their complaints about food, records of family outings–and, probabloy, most important for a writer–words about my attitude, my concerns, feelings about all this.  Goodness!  I must have put a run on the 5 & 10's supply of pencils.

Although it will not be saleable writing, as I anticipate it now, I will copy some of this hand-written stuff and send it to the sons for whom it is pertinent.  Youngest boy came home from play one day with a cricket in a jar.  He had named it "Man's Best Friend," for no reason I could determine.  The middle son who had been proud of the fact that he was among the top readers in one reading group at school, now had been advance to the next higher reading group and found himself at the bottom.  He did not want to be there. Their father, a newly-licensed pilot, took the three boys on a flying tour in his Cessna.  At this time, I look back and wonder that I had such confidence that I did not protest–those most precious lives bundled together for possible disaster.  (I never have liked to fly!)

One anecdote is worth an essay now. The first day the youngest attended pre-school at age 2 1/2, he did a painting on the school's easle.  His next older brother, then still in the same pre-school, proudly exclaimed in showing off little brother's work:  "Look, Greg painted the inside of a whirlwind."   It was certainly an apt description, and one I am turning into an essay today.  Until tomorrow, Willma