The Children Remember

To you, opening an old exercise book,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. This letter is written on exercise-book paper: cream, faintly ruled, with a title whose looping letters are joined so roundly that you can feel a child trying to write beautifully. Blue fountain-pen doodles climb the margins: rows of desks, the hollow of a tree, a few tiny geometric solids. A copper staple holds the corner, and a muted red rubber stamp gives a date somewhere between 1985 and 1987.

What grown-ups file away, children keep in their own way. A poet wrote long ago: "The Child is father of the Man; / And I could wish my days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety." — William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up (1807)

One corner carries a translucent photographic mount with nothing in it yet; it waits for you. Write down whatever you remember and send it to us. Rainy days make the handwriting a little softer.

On behalf of the children,

Storm Post Office

1985–1987 · Desks and a Tree Hollow