Tiny things

One of the slats of Mabel's headboard isn't sanded smooth like the others. I'd never have noticed it, but one night at bedtime I saw her feeling each one. 

"What are you doing?" 

"I'm looking for the rough one."

I felt with her and found the rough one, one from the end on the right.

It's one of those tiny things that children take the time to find out and adults breeze right by. It will be one of the sense memories she retains of her early childhood, of her first bed, of her bedroom and this house.

I remember what the underside of my bed looked like, how it felt to turn my head slideways and slither swiftly under it for a game of hide and seek, where it's rough and smooth and painted, and how it was surprisingly roomy underneath, before I got too big and it wasn't any more. 

I remember the view from inside the hot press (linen cupboard), behind the mound of spare balls of wool for darning, on top of the good damask tablecloth and the other teacosy that was a present and the pillowcases nobody ever used. I hid there for a long time one afternoon, until my seeker had long given up and my mother was getting worried.

I remember the waist-high wall at the back of my best friend's garden, the one we once climbed over to roam through the next garden over and the one after that, until we heard his mother calling in the distance and scrambled hurriedly back to be roundly scolded. The wall was made of rough dark-grey concrete domed over mortared-together granite rocks. The concrete was flaking away in places, where we could pick at it and find the underneath. 

Even when you can go back - and I still can, I'll be there next week - sometimes you need a child to help you see the past properly.