The Pink Eraser

The following letter is written by Mr. Stuart Mclean...my favourite storyteller in the world.  I love traditions and the instant I read this exert from his latest book, "The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks", I knew that this was going to become a yearly tradition, from me to Kat.  She will not understand it when she starts kindergarden, but, as the years go by, I hope she will begin to appreciate it :)


Dear __________, 

Today marks the beginning of another school year and I have been wondering what I could give you to mark this moment. These annual autumn bells: the shuffle of feet on stairs, the rattle of lockers opening and closing. The echoes we all hear when September rolls in. The echoes of the schoolyards and the school days that are both here and not here. 

I have been thinking of these things and wondering if there was some token I could wrap and give you, some little thing that would ring bells as you head off once again with your brave little bag of books. 

Some perfect little thing that tells you I understand the complexity of this week. That I know that though the first day of school is a grand day, the grandest day of all in many ways, that even in its grandeur, in the grandeur of new shoes and shirts, new friends and old ones, new teachers and new classes … that it is a grand bag of tricks too … it comes with the bag of exams and papers and other things can go all too wrong. 

Every one says this is the week that marks the real new year . And why not? What could be more full of possibility than the first day of school. As full of potential as a toboggan at the top of a hill, of a pencil hovering over a blank page, of the smile of that girl with the golden hair sitting in the front row. 

But sometimes the snow melts, and you are standing there with your toboggan, feeling a fool … the only one who didn’t hear the weather forecast. 

It is a complicated thing this business of school. And it is in the complexity of it that the sorrow and the sadness comes. The heavy burden of books that pile up, and the numbers that don’t … the big numbers that won’t add, the equations that won’t equate. The metaphors that lie there on their backs with their feet wiggling in the air. 

Time table and exams, projects and essays … all that stuff that can build up and cause problems and I was hoping this thing I would give you could acknowledge that stuff too. 

My first idea was a dictionary. A blue cloth-covered Oxford Canadian with the title stamped in gold letters. If I gave you a dictionary, you would have all the words in the world and you could look them up and write them down in any way you wanted and the wind would blow and the bells would ring and the lockers would slam and teachers would be bewitched by your way with words ... and that girl with the golden hair too. 

I thought maybe a dictionary with gold letters on the cover would be just the thing. 

Then I thought, maybe a new pair of shoes. 

A brand new pair of sneakers … sneakers as heady as dandelion wine …a pair of “royal crown, cream –sponge, light-foot tennis shoes", and when you put them on, you bounce, and when you run you run like a gazelle. Is it a pair of sneakers you need as you run to school? 

Or what about lunch? What about lunch every day for a year. If I packed you a lunch of carrot sticks and raisins, and peanut butter sandwiches on soft white bread with jelly the way you like it, the bread so fresh you dent it with your fingers just in the unwrapping. I thought if I wrapped your sandwich in wax paper and wrote little notes on the paper with a black felt pen and slipped in some chocolate from time to time that might do the trick. 

I thought and thought... and I thought I could be your wordsmith, your shoemaker or your chef. 

But none of them seemed right. The shoes didn’t fit … you forgot the lunch bag in the bus. And who needs more words anyway. There are words enough to go around. 

And that is when I decided to give you this eraser: an original Pink Pearl.  This little plug of pink rubber with a point at both the ends and this broad side too. The perfect size for mistakes … big or small. An eraser that will fit in your hand whatever size your hands are four or forty, five or fifty. Something that will work today and work tomorrow, that has deep in its rubbery little heart memories of a rubber tree in some thick forest. a gash in the bark, the drip, drip of sap. But more than that, the worried frown of a chemist, too, because your eraser has been vulcanized, my friend.

And even though I don’t have the slightest idea what that means, I do have the deep conviction that if we all carried some small, vulcanized thing with us at all times, we would have an easier go of it and be less prone to explosive anger, road rage, yelling and the gnawing anxiety of our fears 

This is for you.  I wrapped it in this brown paper to give to you this morning, this first day of school and I hope you will understand, when you unwrap it, that life’s greatest treasures are the simple ones. 

Take its measure. Roll it between your fingers. Put it in your pocket. It is all you will need to get through the year safely. 

It will give itself up to correct your mistakes. Its sharp edges slowly rounding, like a piece of glass rolled in the sea, until all that’s left of it are little pink smears on the pages of your life. What more could you ask of anything than that? 

If I am right about this, with this eraser in your bag, you can risk it all. Exams will mean nothing to you. They can roll out the big numbers - and all the arrhythmic poems - and you will knock them clean out of the park. 

This year, you get the pink eraser from the deep thick forest. I give it to you with my love and these instructions: 

Take it with you everywhere 
you never know when you are going to make a mess or where 
just that you are bound to mess things up 
and don’t worry about that 
I give you my permission 
Make many messes 
Make wonderful messes 
The harder you try 
the bigger they’ll be 

Don’t mind mistakes 
The mistakes are how you learn 
You have an eraser 
Go ahead make the messes 
Then … clean them up 
Try again