When I was a newlywed and a young student I cleaned offices late in the evening. I remember my first interview very well. The owner was hesitant toward my age. He thought I would lack experience, but gave me a try when I told him about the women who had trained me to SEE DIRT.
Yippie…all the neighbor kids are back in school. I have my workroom back and I returned to my normal routine -I hear silence and love it.
The kids and I made it through the summer torturing each other. They forced me to watch The Gilmore Girls, and I made them listen to books that I thought they needed to know. To Kill a Mockingbird was one of them and they loved it.
“Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.”
“Oh, they don’t miss me,” she said. “I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it?
Learn child they said and so I did
knowledge is the key,
the more you know, the better it is
and I believed them.
I give classes now and then, mostly to women who want to learn how to restore and reupholster a piece of furniture. Most of them are pretty crafty, to begin with, and they know how to sew.
Our last walk through these halls, then we will be released.
Nobody says a word, we are quiet. This is the moment we have been waiting for.
I remember the time when I was still struggling to learn English, and how hard I tried to learn quickly. Back then the people around me didn’t dare to ask me what I wanted to do because they always got the same answer. “Read with me, please.”
December 9th, 1975
Dear Diary,
I am so glad you are my friend. I carry your key around my neck or hide it in my room, to make sure nobody can read our secrets. Imagine someone would find you, and all my secrets would be spilled and shared with everybody, that would be so humiliating. I can’t even imagine.
Many kids in Europe have to study Latin and Greek in school, and I was tortured with it as well. I learned about the gods and read everything about Greek mythology, and before I knew it, I was in love.