Re: Drawer

This word must be hard for ESL students. I taught elementary school kids and they would have more trouble with words if they were hard to pronounce. Drawer has a sound like shore when it’s used in sentences about places to put things. But an artist can be a draw-er, which makes me think of someone involved with practising law, which puzzles me even more because that person is a lawyer, which is consistent with someone who works with wood who might be a called a sawyer. Poor students! Imagine the questions if I assigned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and his friend Tom who explored the Mississippi River while dressed in muddy cotton drawers!

My dad was a drawer. He would draw on his life experiences to tell fabulous tales. In that sense he was a collector of curiosities & thoughts, in another sense of the word he actually drew stuff. He used a pencil to sketch or a brush to add colour to his surroundings. His drawings were his perception of the world, put on paper. He was sometimes commissioned to replicate a favourite dwelling. One house-proud person was so delighted by his pastel reproduction she exclaimed, “That’s exactly how I see it when I’m turning into the driveway.” When he told me this story and showed me the photo he had taken, I noticed he had left out a telephone pole, and a hydrant, from his final sketched landscape. I understood he was a drawer in that instant. He allowed that the homeowner would draw her own conclusions, all the while anticipating her human need for fantasy.

Everyone has a junk drawer, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the bedroom. Like a magpie we collect stuff and toss them here for when we think we might need them. Even things that have no use. If you can’t afford a place with an attic or basement crawlspace, a drawer will do to hide those old love letters, secret things, or stuff not worthy of the knickknack shelf. My mom had a glassed-in corner curio-cabinet with shelves that could be pulled out for closer examination. She kept her thimble and teaspoon collections in these suede-lined drawers. I can picture her in my childhood memory excitedly drawing on a cigarette as she talked about the origins of these treasures. She let the ash fall where it may.

Thanks to my dad’s influence, story telling later became a big part of my teaching curriculum. I often read fairytales to instigate study of other subjects. I remember one student designing an efficient water well, for a science fair project, after hearing Diamonds & Toads by Charles Perrault being read in class. Together, other students did their research and discovered there were many fables based on the drawing of water from wells. My essay is about to draw to a close. Let your imagination wander.