08. THE WRITER EMERGES

Mearnskirk Hospital

Somewhere around that time my father was injured and, as he was still in the Navy, was sent to a Glasgow Hospital at Mearnskirk in Scotland, which during that time had been converted into a Naval Auxiliary Hospital.

It was my first long trip on a train and the sound and the smell were each in its own way intriguing. When my mother, brother and I arrived at the hospital, it all seemed so immense and busy.

My father had bought me a metal motorboat about a foot and a half long with an engine. It had a red hull and a white deck and I remember how you had to adjust the rudder before you sent it off. Now there are radio controlled models, but the joy of imagination as your craft takes off cannot be surpassed.

I spent hours watching it circling gradually from one side to the other of a small Glasgow lake.

I also decided then and there to start writing a book. That idea was prompted by the three books a week I was reading. Without doubt their plots were copied and intertwined with mine.  I was an avid reader and my choice was always Westerns and I lived each one with intensity. Every day when the traveling library in the trunk of a car came around, I rushed out on the heels of my mother to change books.

Every day I retired and wrote in my own ten-year-old world of make-believe cowboys and, of course, the law. It took a long time, but I had learned to always finish what was started. There was no self-reward if you never finished.

Probably my mother's books were romantic novels or such, for we never had a novel of Tolstoy or Turgenev in the house, but our grammophone was usually running. It was strange how you had to wind it up and fix in place those little needles. Everything is easy today and the fun of "doing" seems to be lost, colored by the importance of objectives.

For some reason the winding of the grammophone brings two other images to mind: the revolving handle of our meat grinder, which I enjoyed helping with, and the revolving handle of the mangle. I don't know what it was about the pattern of fat and lean meat which come out of those little holes or the fascination of seeing water wrung out of a cloth in streams, leaving it flat.

My grandmother always called me when that task was at hand. These are little things, but memories are made of this.

Anyhow every day I applied myself to my Western book, about a page a day, all written by hand of course. No one was intended to read it and I never showed it to anyone. I just enjoyed my own imagination as it wove in and out of my plot.

Why did I never tell anyone? Well, first because I was content in my own world and second I was given complete freedom of choice in everything, without criticism or correction and only guidance when I asked for it. But I never received elaborate praise for anything either. When something was well done, I received a "Well done", nothing more, and as there were never punishments, there were never rewards either. Nor were there ever promises that were never kept.

When we came back from Scotland, two events occurred that had importance.

First we were visited by Sadie, who came down from Scotland. Who she was I have not the slightest idea, perhaps a nurse. Anyway on her two-week visit my father suggested that I should write for her a diary of her complete visit.

So I had fifteen more days of concentrated writing and attention to detail.

When she returned, another Scottish connection appeared. He was a chess expert at some level in Scotland. My father made friends easily and I believe he paid him to teach me chess. So I learned that fascinating game of space and strategy. What delicious gifts parents can give a child with a little thought instead of mindlessly buying what everyone else seems to buy.

Thereafter draughts seemed rather unworthy of my time and anyway my father seldom lost at that time, although he had royal battles with my grandfather. He taught me the little tricks so I never lost either, but I had hundreds of draws.

During these years I was finding my Identity. It's a terrible thing, but it was the norm. I didn't care who I was, but I was being molded. It is not that the molding is an error, but when Identity, the "me and mine" raises its head, there is always the planting of seeds for future disaster. Fortunately, it was not my particular developing time of danger, for I was not of the discrininative and acquisitive temperament which turned into an attribute or an impediment between the ages of six and twelve.

Now there is something important that should be explained here. In those first two stages of development of potential sensitivity and potential discrimination it is not words and ideas which build these traits but experiences. The more that experiences between birth and five are taken over by words and concepts, the more Identity steps in and reduces sensitivity to a tool of intellect and resultant potential confusion. Similarly if the root experiences without words during the stage between five and twelve are taken over by words and concepts, the acquisitiveness and clinging and craving will enter.

I was fortunate that my minor traits of sensitivity and discrimination were never threatened, thanks to a favourable birth.

Now, in and of itself it might not seem important, but the future adult has the base built in the first fifteen years. With a lack of learned social impediments during this time I was free to develop. This does not mean that one is free of Identity problems, but it does mean that one is less likely to fall into the common traps that befall most people.

I trust that this I have written may serve as a lesson to those out there who are still bringing up children in this mad world of stained Samsara.