Growing Pains

I wanted to draw a dog. I sat beside Carlow’s kennel and stared at him for a long time. Then I took a charred stick from the grate, split open a large brown-paper sack and drew a dog on the sack. My married sister who had taken drawing lessons looked at my dog and said, “Not bad.” Father spread the drawing on top of his newspaper, put on his spectacles, looked, said, “Um!” Mother…

To show Mother I must picture Father, because Mother was Father’s reflection—smooth, liquid reflecting of definite, steel-cold reality. Our childhood was ruled by Father’s unbendable iron will, the obeying of which would have been intolerable but for Mother’s patient polishing of its dull metal so that it shone and reflected the beauty of orderliness that was in all Father’s ways, a beauty you had to admire, for, in spite of Father’s severity and his…

My baptism is an unpleasant memory. I was a little over four years of age. My brother was an infant. We were done together, and in our own home. Dr. Reid, a Presbyterian parson, baptized us. He was dining at our house. We were playing in the sitting room. Brother Dick was in his cradle. Mother came into the room with water in her best china bowl. While she lighted the lamp my big…