I recently rediscovered my earliest serious writing efforts. When I first took wing from home, at the age of eighteen, I started to write regularly, and kept it up for a few years until I left grad school. From time to time, I'm going to transcribe some of the writing in this journal.

When my brother went off to school for the first time, I stood, peering out over the high window sill, and cried, one hand rubbing at the wet tears, the other squeezing the life out of my mother's hand. I wanted to be with him. Or maybe I was jealous of the drama and excitement newly added to his life. I certainly can't imagine I wanted to leave the snug harbor of home life for school.

I have a clear memory of my own first day in school. I took a hard, squaretop stool next to Gwen Stirling, a frizzle-haired tomboy from my street, and sat there dumb and nervous, unable even to open my mouth. Later I played solemnly with some plastic sticks, and the great day culminated in a story read out to us as we sat cross-legged (did we have to be taught how to sit like that?) on the cold, dirty, waxed floor.

More frequent memories of early childhood are not of school, however. I remember how often we'd be summoned early out of bed, eyes bleary, shivering in the morning cold, for a day trip by train or bus. Edinburgh, York, Durham, Rothbury and Morpeth were the favorites. One trip to Edinburgh in particular stands out, and it's important because I wonder where the compassion I felt than has gone now. My mother wasn't going to come - her own wish - but the only thing I could think of was this vision of my mother, hands in the kitchen sink, scarf tying back her dripping hair, as she washed our clothes above the noise of the twin-tub. I ran to my room, buried my face in my hands, and cried at the idea. I felt ashamed and stupid for being (in words my Dad might have used) "so soft".

My father was very physical with us, and never, in those early years, shied away from expressing physical affection. Both my brother and I would kiss and hug him naturally at night, along with my mother, before going to bed, at least until our accelerating sense of growing up forbade it. Dad would play with us and tease or tickle. In the mornings, he always dressed roughly before going to bed, and I would cringe from his hairy solidity, unlike my brother. The early morning sounds of my father washing and shaving for work in the bathroom next to our bedroom are part of my childhood. He had this habit of burying his face over and over again in handfuls of water while exhaling, and the breathy noises used to reverberate cleanly in the narrow bathroom. A few minutes later, the heavy front door to our house would slam shut, and I'd drift back to sleep.

Although I harbored no bad feelings towards my father, and we were friends for most of my early childhood, there was always a sense of comfortable warmth in the house when he was away, and we would lie around in the living room, my mother perhaps knitting or reading. When Dad would finally come home, I would almost shiver with the anticipation of the coming cooling, as my mother would tend to his needs: supper and slippers.

Bedtime memories bring a smile to my face; if it was cold, we would shiver as we tucked the bed clothes around us, and my mother, laughing and cooing, would rub us briskly to warm us up. The maybe Dad would come up while we were reading, and would play his old joke of switching off the light as he closed the door. We would scream out "Put the light back one!", and he'd open the door up again, switching the light on at the same time, and say, with affected innocence, "What's wrong?" We'd grin and know that as he closed the door again, he'd repeat his little joke. Unfortunately for my friends, I inherited my father's cornball sense of humor.

Once the light was truly out, my brother Neil and I would listen to the groaning and boiling of the water heater and cower under the covers for fear of the "boiler man" and his grumbling stomach. When it stopped, we'd play "Kevin and the Buses", or, more usually, we'd dive into our other made up world "The Baby Mousies". This was a fantastical world we'd built up over the years - I was Pat, and Neil was Margaret (what a couple of queens we were!), deputy and leader, respectively, of the mouse world living in our house. Neil had the upper hand in everything, being older than me; the best flag ship for Margaret, the nices house. I was compensated by having the longest flagship, the Great Britain. For some reason these mice always talked in squeaky voices. Sometimes the two main characters would be complimented by Mary, and even by Kelvin, the train driver, great human friend of mousekind, who took his name from Kelvin Grove, one of the streets on which our corner house was situated. Slowly, our squeaky voices would die and we'd drift into sleep.

Morning again, and we'd wake up early on weekends. We'd stand at the top of the stairs and shout over and over again, "Mammy is it time to get up?"