DOING IT ANYWAY
Through thick and thin, Sarah, Gran would say, you must learn to push yourself past I cant. That was her motto in raising the family; she couldnt bear the idea of spoiling her grandchildren or letting us turn into mollycoddled softies. Cant do it? Well show you how. Dont want to? Well, well make you, shed insisther favourite, almost military, phrase.
If it werent for my flighty mother, I might have been a top student all ten years at school. As it was, I only managed it oncein year five, 1951when Mum, having just remarried, moved to stay with my stepfather in Ealing for a year and left me with Gran. That was Grans opportunity at last. Now she could finally implement her methods without anyone interfering.
Several times a week, shed have me up at six sharp, making me recite my lessons aloud. Miraculously, she managed what everyone thought impossibleme, forever woolly on geography and biology, could suddenly point to all the coal fields, steelworks, every plain and hill on a map of England, explain which river flowed where, or how pollination happened. Gran forced me to listen to the Childrens Hour, pack my satchel the night before, and allowed me out to play only after my homework was done.
Business before pleasure, shed remind me, Work first, fun afterremember that. No traipsing round with Mum to the West End theatres or the cinema, no late visitors or other nonsense Gran called unhealthy for a child.
Colours seemed to drain from my world, but other hues took their place. I grew competitive, driven. I found out I could keep up with everyone elsein fact, sometimes I could even do better. Gone were my days of scraping by with average marks. I climbed up the ladder, andmiracle of miraclesbecame a star pupil. Ill never forget that feeling, the day I walked home clutching the firstand lastcertificate of excellence Id ever won, holding it out in front of me for all to see.
I dont understand, I just cant figure it out, Id moan over another maths problem. Nonsense! Gran would exclaim, plonking herself beside me and reading the question out in a voice that filled the room. That was the true battleground of those daysGrans boundless energy matched only by her utter lack of patience. When my bewilderment reached its peak and her voice soared to unimaginable heights, my kind granddad would shout, Thats it, Im going to drown myself! and flee from the room. I would cry quietly over my textbook, fall asleep in tears. But in the morning well. I should start a new paragraph for that.
In the morning, Id find on the table by my sofa-bed a pristine exercise book, open at page one, laid out with meticulous method, presenting a step-by-step solution for that impossible problem, written carefully in Grans neat, looping handwriting. First, the problem written out from the textbookthen three different ways to solve it, methodically explained. Gran would already be off to work by then. Beside the notebook was my porridge, still warm, wrapped up snugly in a scarf. It was all like something out of a fairy talemaybe about the princess who spun flax into gold by morning, or the kindly elves who did the shoemakers work at night.
Really, it was hardly good teaching for Gran to work out the answer for me, but it was her greatest stroke of genius. That solved question was like a talisman, proof that nothing in life is truly hopeless, that all things can be sorted, like in those fairy tales: sleep on it, and tomorrow will be wiser.
Sleep on it, love, Gran would say, coming home worn out. Im off for a kip. Sometimes shed just conk out right there, shoes and all, only to be gone in the morning when I awoke. But there on the back of my chair was my white starched pinafore, and a fresh lace collar sewn to my school dress. Gran remembered I needed to be presentable, and shed done it all.
No, Grans kindness didnt make me expect the world to serve me on a plate. Instead, it filled me with a quiet conviction that, in the end, things would work out. No matter how hard life has tried to knock it out of me since, that childlike confidence has stuck.
Even now, decades later, I sometimes hear Grans brisk, Nonsense! echoing in my head. Whenever Im tempted to say, Thats it. Im finished. I cant go on, her old voice pipes up: Do it anyway.
If ever I have a clever thought, it comes in the small hours of the morning, in that liminal space between sleep and waking. Because morning is a blank exercise book with a page of solutions insidea reminder that yesterdays tears can turn into todays answers.
