As a surrogate great aunt,
I took the child of three into a graveyard,
and we went to the top of a field of graves
to conduct the choir of stones in front of us.

There are perhaps not many great aunts
who would do just this.
We pretended they were a special choir from the past,
and allowed them to communicate with us
in a simple manner, in some ways sensing
that we shared their loneliness,
and made them feel some warmth from us who were living.

At another part of this graveyard:
Vår Frelser's gravlund in Oslo,
we walked along an avenue of chestnut trees,
and beside us were big graves,
we pretended we were king and queen
parading before the on-looking stones beside us,
and walked with great dignity between them.

It was also in this graveyard,
not far from where she lived,
that I took her as a baby for walks,
and if she cried I took her close to the winter dry hedges,
and we crackled the Autumn leaves together,
she soon stopped crying.

Another time I took her under the weeping willow tree
so that the leaves and lowest branches brushed
over her face, she was a little taken aback
the first time I did it, and then wished to do it again.

And another time I took her beneath a small tree
that was about to lose it leaves,
and shook the whole tree vigourously,
covering herself an her pram completely,
she roared with laughter at this.

And when we finally took her on a walk
in the big forests,
she walked towards the bushes off the path
to her left, and stood with the branches
and leaves against her face for quite a while, still,
contemplating the sensation,
we let her stay until she decided to move again.
At such a young age, this was unusual we felt.

When Autumn leaves had fallen,
she, like all other children,
loved to toss them high and feel and see them
falling down beside her, laughing all the while.

Every detail in nature interested me,
and I looked at things with her a great deal, a stone,
a feather, a shell, all was a possible toy,
toys of far greater worth than the coloured plastic toys.

We felt the smoothness of a leaf,
the roughness of stone, the bumps of a snail's shell,
all was of interest.
And of course the sky with its ever moving clouds
and great expanses of blue.

We listened to Baroque music, with its bold rhythm,
that she even swayed to when quite tiny,
later she stopped what she was doing,
as the movement stopped, and the new one began,
fascinated by it,
as she was the tapping of the feet in the Norwegian
'Folkemusikk Hardingfela' violin pieces,
and later was to become a dancer
better at the rhythm than her teachers.

The other music she heard was Indian Classical music,
that has rhythms and counter rhythms of great complexity.

Not only a dancer but a singer,
with a strong voice,
albeit in more popular music than I had played with her.
Not being an influence on her after the age of five.

When we sat down to read a little book
about a duck and a fox, (Jemima Puddleduck) the duck in danger,
she immediately jumped up and said,
without me prompting, shall we act it out.
And we did.

I wonder how much of this grounding
from someone in her past,
will come out eventually in her future,
perhaps none,
perhaps some when, if, she has children of her own,
who knows,
we do our best to awaken interests in children,
to enrich their lives,
but all too often they don't take the thread
and develop it into those rich lives,
preferring to stay on the narrow path
of all that is pop, quick, short rewards
rather than persevering
and finding the gold that is our cultural heritage.

Ann Waddicor.