On Love
Title: On Love
Author: Florence A. Watson
Genre: Essay
Written for: Brigit’s Flame, June 2014, Week 3 (Just for Fun)
Prompt: Love
Length: 1123 words
On Love
Love is a ‘big word’. The irony is that I first heard about that concept from someone who was, essentially, unlovely. He was a high school English teacher, and not a very good one. He was a bully. He used sarcasm to put down students in his class, did not instill in them a love of literature and clearly disliked teaching. Despite that, he is one of only three English teachers I had over all my years of formal education who taught me anything I have held onto. I am sure the ‘big word’ concept was not his to begin with - he had not the originality of mind to come up with it himself (and being an arrogant so-and-so, he had not the integrity to tell his class where the concept had originated) - but he is the one who first expressed it within my hearing. Love has meaning beyond its four meagre letters; it is a concept with power which lasts beyond argument. Love shapes and grants one wings; lack of love cripples. Several million words have been written about this one short word. All that makes it ‘big.’
I was born of love, of the love of two people for each other and of their love for their children. All sorts of incidents from my childhood hold this feeling; these are but three: my mother teaching me to read at the kitchen table when I was 3; my father taking my sister and me to mooch through a second-hand bookshop; and much later (when I was at university) my big sister teaching me how to write essays that stood at least some chance of receiving better than a bare pass.
Three of my teachers introduced me to authors whose works I have never tired of:
I remember sitting on the floor after the end of the normal school day, age nine, as Mrs Henry (who, strictly speaking was not an English teacher, since primary school teachers generally teach a smattering of all subjects, rather than just one) read out loud Farley Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, one chapter per sitting . That year we had a reading programme in school which involved studying some very short and rather dull stories on cards and answering reading comprehension questions about each story, ‘passing’ the little test and then progressing on to the next card in the box (with a slightly more complex story). In retrospect I realise she did not approve of this teaching method (though the curriculum requirement was dutifully followed during the normal school day) and had therefore decided to read to us after school. Even those pupils who were not fond of books stayed behind to listen. She chose novels that every child could not help but love. I remember her with love.
In my second year of university, I took one ‘optional’ course within the English department. I remember Professor Pullen, a quirky quick-witted round little man who taught an odd course called “Great Modern Novels” (or some such title) based (I again realise in retrospect) on those books he loved. Unlike many academics he seemed not to care about career advancement (or if he did, he hid it well). He transmitted his love of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier to me.
And I remember Mr Lloyd; I have such happy memories of his teaching and I share memories of him with my sister who also was taught by him five years before I was (and he remembered her, and smiled at me when he realised I was Greer’s sister). He was a tall, thin, gentle man who undoubtedly looked much the same at 35 as he looked at 65. I think he was probably closer to the latter when, over the course of four years in high school, he taught me Latin and Greek and Classics in Translation. I adored him as a teacher. He opened up the worlds of Homer and Ovid and Virgil, of Plato and Lucretius and Epicurius. I expect he is no longer alive, but his legacy lives.
As you can see, one of my abiding loves is reading. Periodically, I return to those books I loved as a child: Winnie-the-Pooh, Mr Wicker’s Window, Poo-Poo and the Dragons (that last one given to me by my father one time when I was unwell). Others I read from teens to early adulthood will always have their place on my bookshelf: the works of Rudyard Kipling, EM Almedingen, Jane Duncan, Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliff, Dorothy Dunnett, Peter Kropotkin. From teen years onwards, through my sister’s recommendations, I developed enthusiasm for fantasy and science fiction. I don’t know how much my enjoyment of books is a reflection of my character or how much my choices of reading materials have shaped my character. I just know they are intrinsically part of me now.
Words have been an important part of my career: writing report after report after report. I have honed my craft through constant daily records, risk analyses, parenting (and other kinds of) assessments, Court statements. The sheer volume of my professional writing over the years, if you stacked it up, would be greater than the complete works of Mary Renault (who published from the late 1930s to the early 1980s). But report writing allows no scope for the imagination (no matter that some clients have claimed my reports about them were works of fiction!). So while I have felt considerable satisfaction and have taken pride in my professional writing, I would not say I ‘love’ it. I am good at it; but that is not the same thing at all!
In recent years I have ventured into writing fiction, honing this new branch of my writing craft on fan-fiction, although a few things I write have totally original characters set in my own universe. For the last two years, it ‘feels’ as though I have done no writing. That is an exaggeration. I have written some stories I can be proud of. But my professional life was so draining it was a struggle to write and, until quite recently (when I have been able to take a break from the frontline of child protection practice) my output has been quite limited. What I have realised over the last couple of years is that my joy in (and love of) my professional work has diminished along with the reduction in reading and fiction writing. Truly, although the two forms of writing seem separate - one fired by imagination, the other the result of meticulous evidence gathering - they are linked. They are two sides of the same coin of a passion that has underpinned my whole life.
As I said at the start: love is a big word.
Author: Florence A. Watson
Genre: Essay
Written for: Brigit’s Flame, June 2014, Week 3 (Just for Fun)
Prompt: Love
Length: 1123 words
On Love
Love is a ‘big word’. The irony is that I first heard about that concept from someone who was, essentially, unlovely. He was a high school English teacher, and not a very good one. He was a bully. He used sarcasm to put down students in his class, did not instill in them a love of literature and clearly disliked teaching. Despite that, he is one of only three English teachers I had over all my years of formal education who taught me anything I have held onto. I am sure the ‘big word’ concept was not his to begin with - he had not the originality of mind to come up with it himself (and being an arrogant so-and-so, he had not the integrity to tell his class where the concept had originated) - but he is the one who first expressed it within my hearing. Love has meaning beyond its four meagre letters; it is a concept with power which lasts beyond argument. Love shapes and grants one wings; lack of love cripples. Several million words have been written about this one short word. All that makes it ‘big.’
I was born of love, of the love of two people for each other and of their love for their children. All sorts of incidents from my childhood hold this feeling; these are but three: my mother teaching me to read at the kitchen table when I was 3; my father taking my sister and me to mooch through a second-hand bookshop; and much later (when I was at university) my big sister teaching me how to write essays that stood at least some chance of receiving better than a bare pass.
Three of my teachers introduced me to authors whose works I have never tired of:
I remember sitting on the floor after the end of the normal school day, age nine, as Mrs Henry (who, strictly speaking was not an English teacher, since primary school teachers generally teach a smattering of all subjects, rather than just one) read out loud Farley Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, one chapter per sitting . That year we had a reading programme in school which involved studying some very short and rather dull stories on cards and answering reading comprehension questions about each story, ‘passing’ the little test and then progressing on to the next card in the box (with a slightly more complex story). In retrospect I realise she did not approve of this teaching method (though the curriculum requirement was dutifully followed during the normal school day) and had therefore decided to read to us after school. Even those pupils who were not fond of books stayed behind to listen. She chose novels that every child could not help but love. I remember her with love.
In my second year of university, I took one ‘optional’ course within the English department. I remember Professor Pullen, a quirky quick-witted round little man who taught an odd course called “Great Modern Novels” (or some such title) based (I again realise in retrospect) on those books he loved. Unlike many academics he seemed not to care about career advancement (or if he did, he hid it well). He transmitted his love of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier to me.
And I remember Mr Lloyd; I have such happy memories of his teaching and I share memories of him with my sister who also was taught by him five years before I was (and he remembered her, and smiled at me when he realised I was Greer’s sister). He was a tall, thin, gentle man who undoubtedly looked much the same at 35 as he looked at 65. I think he was probably closer to the latter when, over the course of four years in high school, he taught me Latin and Greek and Classics in Translation. I adored him as a teacher. He opened up the worlds of Homer and Ovid and Virgil, of Plato and Lucretius and Epicurius. I expect he is no longer alive, but his legacy lives.
As you can see, one of my abiding loves is reading. Periodically, I return to those books I loved as a child: Winnie-the-Pooh, Mr Wicker’s Window, Poo-Poo and the Dragons (that last one given to me by my father one time when I was unwell). Others I read from teens to early adulthood will always have their place on my bookshelf: the works of Rudyard Kipling, EM Almedingen, Jane Duncan, Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliff, Dorothy Dunnett, Peter Kropotkin. From teen years onwards, through my sister’s recommendations, I developed enthusiasm for fantasy and science fiction. I don’t know how much my enjoyment of books is a reflection of my character or how much my choices of reading materials have shaped my character. I just know they are intrinsically part of me now.
Words have been an important part of my career: writing report after report after report. I have honed my craft through constant daily records, risk analyses, parenting (and other kinds of) assessments, Court statements. The sheer volume of my professional writing over the years, if you stacked it up, would be greater than the complete works of Mary Renault (who published from the late 1930s to the early 1980s). But report writing allows no scope for the imagination (no matter that some clients have claimed my reports about them were works of fiction!). So while I have felt considerable satisfaction and have taken pride in my professional writing, I would not say I ‘love’ it. I am good at it; but that is not the same thing at all!
In recent years I have ventured into writing fiction, honing this new branch of my writing craft on fan-fiction, although a few things I write have totally original characters set in my own universe. For the last two years, it ‘feels’ as though I have done no writing. That is an exaggeration. I have written some stories I can be proud of. But my professional life was so draining it was a struggle to write and, until quite recently (when I have been able to take a break from the frontline of child protection practice) my output has been quite limited. What I have realised over the last couple of years is that my joy in (and love of) my professional work has diminished along with the reduction in reading and fiction writing. Truly, although the two forms of writing seem separate - one fired by imagination, the other the result of meticulous evidence gathering - they are linked. They are two sides of the same coin of a passion that has underpinned my whole life.
As I said at the start: love is a big word.