How can I not love her: that open gaze, the contentment of her small smile, her shiny buttons, her curly hair ribboned in the way she requested each morning - ‘two curls up’ - after my mother had teased out the overnight tangles with a large, pink, Betterware comb.
I think I remember the day: the summer of 1963, my first term at Tirmorfa Infants School, a class at a time marshalled into the assembly hall, the photographer lifting his big camera as we each took our turn in the single wooden chair in the middle of that high-ceilinged room.
You see that signet ring? I am wearing it now, 61 years later, after finding it last year in an old jewellery box studded with seashells, the silver band split from years of growth, after a silversmith repaired it for me. I cannot see the join.
Comments