. . . in the rocking chair, on my grandmother's lap, turnip soup, her favorite, going 'ker-pank' inside her little belly, her sweet alto rising with:
In my red rocking chair
We will travel far
Over hill, over dale,
Where the fairies are.
Then on to Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden Of Verses where most verses are journeys of one kind or another befitting their author's lifelong propensity for travel:
Smooth it glides upon its travel,
Here a wimple, there a gleam--
O the clean gravel!
O the smooth stream!
~~~~~
I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Where the knotty crocodile
Lies and blinks in the Nile;
~~~~~
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod
~~~~~
The coach is at the door at last;
The eager children, mounting fast
And kissing hands, in chorus sing;
Good-bye, Good-bye to everything!
Good-bye, Good-bye indeed! WWII had been over for nearly a year and I would be starting school in the fall. We moved into a duplex nearby. Life as I had known it with Grandmother was done . . . but the seeds of skedaddle were already sown.
1941
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