Under the Aspect of Eternity

Consider this childhood memory. When I was a little girl, before I started school, my mother taught me to write. First I learned to write the alphabet with a pencil on lined paper. Letters were a mixture of curved and straight lines. An ‘a’ was quite difficult: you began to draw a circle—but you didn’t make it a whole circle—and then you put a straight vertical line on the right-hand side of it. ‘b’ was a tall letter, made from a circle and a vertical line twice the height of the ‘a,’ on the left side. When I wrote my name, I had to draw a ‘C’ as tall as a ‘b.’ The lined paper helped me get the proportions right. My mother’s writing was round, clear, flowing, very beautiful. She could join all the letters in each word together. I tried to make my letters more beautiful, like hers. I tried hard not to make any mistakes.