For a start, here's a recent column of hers.
What Are Patterns For?
I was most pleased to meet Alan Smith, a close boyhood friend of my sweetheart, Andrew.
Andrew and Alan lived just a few houses apart in their village in England and went to school together, but their lives couldn’t have been more different. Whereas Andrew had a warm, loving family, Alan was virtually fatherless. His dad, who worked for the railroad in London, would usually come home for a quick supper and hasten off to the pub, where he would spend the whole evening pursuing and achieving total inebriation.
Things were even worse when Alan’s father did occasionally stay home, for he fought with his wife and beat his children. After one especially fierce scene, Alan and his two brothers were sent to live with relatives, and after some time there, Alan was sent to an orphanage.
I hear you sighing, remembering orphanages in "Oliver Twist” or stories of orphan trains in this country. But for Alan, his stay in the orphanage was the happiest time of his childhood. Life finally seemed fair.
When he and another boy tried to hoard toys and make the others pay to use them, the headmaster sat down with the two boys and reasoned, with their help, that the toys belonged to everyone. If one child tried to take them away from others, a fair punishment should be mutually agreed upon and consistently carried out.
After some time passed (Alan was only about five and doesn't remember how long he stayed there), he was told that he would get to leave the orphanage by train and go home. Rather than rejoicing, little Alan wondered what he had done wrong. Whatever it was, it must have been grievous for him to be thrown out of the orphanage, a home he had come to love.
Carted off to the train station, he was introduced to a railroad employee who was told to see that he was put off in his hometown. In his loneliness and confusion, little Alan attached himself to the train employee, only to have that man deliver him to a stranger, saying, "This is your father; he will take you home now.” Again, Alan painfully wondered what he had done wrong to lose the only attachment he had left.
The rest of Alan's childhood was filled with stormy scenes.
He was a bright lad, however, and didn't let his childhood cripple him. He went on to do a five-year apprenticeship at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, emigrated to Ontario, Canada and had a successful career as a technician at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. After age 17, he had no more contact with his cruel father, but his time in the orphanage somehow gave him a strong sense of logic, of consequences, of actions and reactions which carried over into his precise work and personal life as a successful pilot and airstrip owner.
Now believe me, I‘m not saying that orphanages are places that generally help children think better or become happier. It’s just that in the case of Alan, most anything would have been preferable to home. He desperately needed help in learning that life can be safe, fair and logical.
When I heard the story of Alan’s childhood, I couldn’t help thinking of Amy Lowell’s famous poem “Patterns,” in which she asks “What are patterns for?”
That's what patterns are for, Amy Lowell. That's what patterns are for.
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