12 June, 2018

Dipping in and out of books her whole life through…


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It is almost a year ago that my mother died. In the last weeks I have been thinking about her lifelong love of reading. She always considered herself the informed consumer, the appreciative reader, never the artist. She read (at least) one book a day all her adult life. She dipped in and out of her books the whole day through.

Early morning breakfast, she read her newspapers. She then did some chores or went off into town to do some shopping. Late morning coffee, book at hand. More reading after lunch. Late afternoon she’d meet with friends or make some telephone calls. Before dinner, she read The Atlantic, New Yorker, or the weekend section of The Guardian. Dinner. Early to bed with her book.

The astonishing thing is she would remember the stories, the characters, the plot of this immense library of books she’d read. I’d be reading a book and telling her about some aspect of the story that intrigued me, and she would talk about it as though she also just read the book yesterday. It often turned out that there were years between her reading the book and our conversations.

My mother stowed away a long list of books she meant to buy in the side pocket of her wallet. If she read a magazine article that referred to a new author or book, she’d hurriedly take out the list and scribble the name down and then continue reading. This list was the only haphazard messy thing she owned. In all other aspects of her life she was ordered and meticulous. The list was written in different colours of ink, sometimes the titles or authors names were scribbled illegibly in the margins, others were crossed through after she found them.

I wish I had saved one of those lists. It makes me sad that I will never see one of them again.

11 June, 2018

A fury that sits deep inside…



Tracee Ellis Ross talking boldly about women’s experiences in the world, struck a note with me. As someone who was “raised properly” by middle-class parents, I was taught well how to put the lid on any indignation, frustration and rage that was/is brewing deep inside. It is too messy to talk about. I wouldn’t want to offend.

And then, when you add racism and ageism to the cauldron of bubbling horror, it is no wonder we are uncomfortable to lift the lid. What words might escape our lips? What shadows would this cast upon our idyllic lives? What realities would we have to except and act upon?

It would be enough for just one of those realities to bubble out, “It’s men’s responsibility to change men’s bad behaviour” and float around in the ether of our social consciousness.

02 June, 2018

Language over generations



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My two children and I were discussing recently how it is, even though German is their dominant language, they do not feel as if they possess an extensive or differentiated German vocabulary.

Their father is originally from Italy and learnt to speak German as a 10-year-old. He does not speak anymore the Sicilian dialect of his childhood. He studied to be a translator and linguist and so acquired a further four languages along the way.

The way we communicated when our children were living at home was; I spoke English, which my husband and children understand, and they spoke German the whole time, which I’m fluent in. So, I naturally assumed their German would be comparable to all their German schoolmates. Apparently not.

My daughter says she feels as if there was still something missing, some depth to the language, they never learnt. She proposes it has to do with the fact that none of her grandparents were German. Maybe family history and shared family memories are an intrinsic part of the passing on of language. What a lovely notion.