My mother, for her part, kept every one of these letters, binding them carefully in neat bundles with green tape.

"From that very first Sunday at St. Peter's until the day my mother died thirty-two years later, I wrote to her once a week, sometimes more often, whenever I was away from home. I wrote to her every week from St. Peter's (I had to), and every week from my next school, Repton, and every week from Dar es Salaam in East Africa, where I went on my first job after leaving school, and then every week during the war from Kenya and Iraq and Egypt when I was flying with the RAF. My mother, for her part, kept every one of these letters, binding them carefully in neat bundles with green tape, but this was her own secret." (p. 81)

"A boy of my own age called Highton was so violently incensed by the whole affair that he said to me before lunch that day, 'You don't have a father. I do. I am going to write to my father and tell him what has happened and he'll do something about it.'

'He couldn't do anything,' I said.

'Oh yes he could,' Highton said. 'And what's more he will. My father won't let them get away with this.'

'Where is he now?'

'He's in Greece,' Highton said. 'In Athens. But that won't make any difference.'

Then and there, little Highton sat down and wrote to the father he admired so much, but of course nothing came of it. It was nevertheless a touching and generous gesture from one small boy to another and I have never forgotten it." (p. 122)

Unless you have sailed down the Oslo fjord like this yourself on a tranquil summer's day, you cannot imagine what it's like.

"We loved this part of the journey. The splendid little vessel with its single tall funnel would move out into the calm waters of the fjord and proceed at a leisurely pace along the coast, stopping every hour or so at a small wooden jetty where a group of villagers and summer people would be waiting to welcome friends or to collect parcels and mail. Unless you have sailed down the Oslo fjord like this yourself on a tranquil summer's day, you cannot imagine what it's like. It is impossible to describe the sensation of absolute peace and beauty that surrounds you. The boat weaves in and out between countless tiny islands, some with small brightly painted wooden houses on them, but many with not a house or a tree on the bare rocks. These granite rocks are so smooth that you can lie and sun yourself on them in your bathing-costume without putting a towel underneath. We would see long-legged girls and tall boys basking on the rocks of the islands. There are no sandy beaches on the fjord. The rocks go straight down to the water's edge and the water is immediately deep. As a result, Norwegian children all learn to swim when they are young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe. Sometimes when our little vessel slipped between two islands, the channel was so narrow we could almost touch the rocks on either side. We would pass row-boats and canoes with flaxen-haired children in them, their skins browned by the sun, and we would wave to them and watch their tiny boats rocking violently in the swell that our larger ship left behind." (p. 61)

By the time I was ten, I would be permitted to take part in these ceremonies, and I always finished up as tipsy as a lord.

Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl

"In Norway, you may select any individual around the table and skaal him or her in a small private ceremony. You first lift your glass high and call out the name. 'Bestemama!' you say. 'Skaal, Bestemama!' She will then lift her own glass and hold it up high. At the same time your own eyes meet hers, and you must keep looking deep into her eyes as you sip your drink. After you have both done this, you raise your glasses high up again in a sort of silent final salute, and only then does each person look away and set down his glass. It is a serious and solemn ceremony, and as a rule on formal occasions everyone skaals everyone else around the table once. If there are, for example, ten people present and you are one of them, you will skaal your nine companions once each individually, and you yourself will also receive nine separate skaals at different times during the meal - eighteen in all. That's how they work it in polite society over there, at least they used to in the old days, and quite a business it was. By the time I was ten, I would be permitted to take part in these ceremonies, and I always finished up as tipsy as a lord." (p. 58-9)

If you didn't know already, you now know that Roald Dahl was and still is one of my favorite authors. So it's with great pleasure that I'm reading his collection of childhood memories!

Few last words

I realized this past weekend that it was the 50th anniversary since To Kill A Mockingbird was published. How fitting that that be the case the summer that I finally decided to read it. It had been sitting on my bookshelves for years. I really loved it. What bothered me was reading on some blog (perhaps I'll link it when I find it) that many adults don't realize while reading it that this is a children's book. The author was more or less arguing that Harper Lee wrote a simple book that's overrated and doesn't deserve to be a classic. Perhaps it is a children's book. It's easy to read, that's for sure. But what I think that so many adults miss with children's novels is how often they hold messages that are meant more for the adults than the children reading them. It is why I love Roald Dahl. And The Little Prince. Sure, TKAM is about a lawyer forced to defend a black man in a still very racist South. But it's also about growing up and innocence and loss of innocence and being terribly confused as a child as to why there's so much hatred among people that are all very much the same.

In any case, the movie came from Netflix a couple of days ago so I'm excited to watch it. I wanted to blog more, but there was so much and then it would've been pointless. It was mostly dialogue between Scout and whoever else she was talking to, or the thoughts that went on inside her head.

His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor's image blurred with my sudden tears.

"He was still leaning against the wall. He had been leaning against the wall when I came into the room, his arms folded across his chest. As I pointed he brought his arms down and pressed the palms of his hands against the wall. They were white hands, sickly white hands that had never seen the sun, so white they stood out garishly against the dull cream wall in the dim light of Jem's room.
I looked from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyes traveled up his thin frame to his torn denim shirt. His face was as white as his hands, but for a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on top of his head.
When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange small spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor's image blurred with my sudden tears." (p. 270)

But I must have been reasonably awake, or I would not have received the impression that was creeping into me.

"But I must have been reasonably awake, or I would not have received the impression that was creeping into me. It was not unlike one I had last winter, and I shivered, though the night was hot. The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the same as a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight as the doors of the Radley Place. A deserted, waiting, empty street, and the courtroom was packed with people. A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning." (p. 210)

He preferred the magic of his own inventions.

"Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors." (p. 144)

"Walking toward the office, Dill and I fell into step behind Atticus and Jem. Dill was encumbered by the chair, and his pace was slower. Atticus and Jem were well ahead of us, and I assumed that Atticus was giving him hell for not going home, but I was wrong. As they passed under a streetlight, Atticus reached out and massaged Jem's hair, his one gesture of affection." (p. 155)