There are pieces of my childhood I can’t remember. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe my brain is filled with TV commercial jingles and all the lyrics to all the Beatles’ songs. Sometimes I’ll be doing something and some wisp of a recollection will start to form, then be quickly gone, unable to root in time and place.
Other things I would rather not think about won’t go away.
Here is the next installment of The Inner Panda Diaries, which I am drawing without a net (no pencil drawing, just straight to ink).
If I had been thinking about it, I would have made the book “Little House in the bamboo” but I wasn’t really thinking.
I hope everyone survived the 4th of July festivities in the US, and Tuesday, as it is known in the rest of the world. Also at my house, it’s just Tuesday, except with incendiary devices going off in the very dry woods.
Panda on
Anne, your Inner Panda Diary is reading like the story of my life! I grew up in many places - my father was a college professor and the only way to advance his career, it seemed, was to move from place to place - so Falls Church, VA was my home from age 2 to 5, Pullman, Washington from 5 to 8, Eugene, Oregon from 8 to 11, Berkeley Heights, NJ from 11 to 14 and so on . . . each place I moved, all the other kids knew each other, and I had to start over getting to know new people, and I was shy! My chief focus was drawing, on large rolls of butcher paper my parents got for me since I went through so much paper - and reading - I read all of Shakespeare's plays when I was 10, and everything on Greek myths I could find. My other love was for animals - we had beagles and cats - and I always loved going to zoos (when we moved to Seattle for two summers for my father to teach summer school, we were within walking distance of the Woodland Park Zoo!!!!). Can't wait for the next installment!
Love that pandas were with you all along, I think.