Good morning Captain! I just had my 79th birthday,
I am a woman born in England with ancestors who came from other places as well.
I very much enjoyed your piece on children and would have written a comment but
prefer to speak directly to you. I was brought up by a trained Nanny and in
unusual circumstances, that is, a war which involved moving from place to place
and living on the minimum amount. Nothing can be worse for the developing
mind and soul than being put in a group of other children supposedly supervised
by a woman with no personal interest in them. Many women can be good nursing
mothers because nature and the hormones kick in here. Later one is in the
absolute power of one person who is most often NOT INTERESTED AND SELF
ABSORBED. I do not speak from experience here but from observation. I am an
historian by training who was lucky enough to make a living as a
librarian\archivist here in North America. Thanks to Vivien, my nurse/ nanny/
governess, a Methodist by the way, I was instructed in the basics of the
Christian faith [I am now a convert to Catholicism] and a sane person
[well, maybe], my sister owes her very life to this woman. Growiing up with
adults dying all around one for something greater than themselves plus some
knowledge of God gives one the core belief that it is all for a purpose.
Well, enough! I could go on and on as my friends ofteen remark... Most
important: Children are not here to be our slaves and playthings as you
say.
Thank you!
Setting aside the subject matter for a moment, I must say that this is one of the finest examples of letter writing that I've seen in the whole blogosphere. Now, you can't get an e-mail let alone a tweet where spelling and grammar weren't thrown to the four winds. People used to strive for this excellence. It was part of regular life, not just for the upper crust. I remember in a documentary on the Civil War, letters to home from even field soldiers (common farmers) and literate slaves were correct, and they got across both the emotion and information that they were trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is because it comes without those distractions that I can guess that she was one of the WW II children spirited off to the countryside during the German bombings, cared for by nannies while the fathers fought on the front and the mothers made best of their lives still in the cities, with even the Royal Family holing up in the subway tube under London during bombing occurrences, rather than flee.
Now I cringe as I prepare to go to the next read, where no doubt someone will be bragging in modern speech, "don't h8 me for pimpin' my mad skillz, homeboyeeeeeee."
Fair dues, if only her voice was heard more loudly.
ReplyDeleteawesome!
ReplyDelete