One of my fondest memories
from my childhood is of sitting next to my Dad as he corrected his papers at
night. Dad was a teacher and,
appropriately, he had an old teacher's desk that sat in our walk-up attic which
was really his office and a play room for us kids. On each side of his desk, above the set of
drawers, was a board that pulled out pretty far. I would sit at it and draw a picture for my
Dad as he corrected his papers. My sibs
and I would take turns at the slide out board, drawing pictures for our Dad.
Dad had one of those red
grease type of pencils that he used; the kind that when it was almost worn flat
you would peel it down to expose more of the marker. When we were finished with our drawings, Dad
would write a big "A+" in red in the upper corner of our drawing and
he would circle the A+. Sometimes he'd
underline it twice or sometimes he'd put 2 exclamation marks after it. This delighted us beyond belief.
While we waited to take our turns
at the drawing board, we would play on the floor with the blocks that our Dad
had made for us out of 2x4's. There were
3 different lengths of blocks; we had several of each length and all had been
sanded smooth and had some sort of finish on them.
My father's oak desk also came
with a teacher's oak chair. This chair
could swivel and lean way back. The
chair had wheels that squeaked and screeched when they rolled and the huge
spring that allowed you to lean back made a sort of clanking sound when you did.
These are the sounds that would
lull me to sleep at night, my Dad correcting his papers long after we'd go to
bed. Often times these sounds were
combined with my Mom playing the piano one floor below me and that's a whole
other story for another time.
This would be a wonderful memory
and a wonderful story on its own; at least for me, but it gets better; at least
for me. I have the desk now; I have the
grease pencil too. We were offered the
desk when Mom sold her home in 2007 and were thrilled to have it. Our younger son helped my husband disassemble
it to get it down from the attic. He restored
it beautifully.
It now sits in our study. The wheels on the chair still screech and it clanks when you lean back on it. To others, this would be annoying I'd think. To me it's a comforting sound and I wouldn't have it any other way.
