When I was a small boy, a relative died, and we came into possession of her books. I couldn’t read yet, but I loved stories, so I was fascinated by the books. One in particular caught my eye. On the cover was a picture of a gaunt older woman with bristly, shoulder-length grey hair. She stood rigid in her simple but elegant clothes and looked out at us with a determined expression. She appeared weathered and tired but not quite ready to give up. Beside her was a cottage made of large, square stones. The wooden door was heavy and rustic. I needed to know who that woman was and why she looked the way she did.
I begged my mother to read me the story, but she said it wasn’t for children. I didn’t care. I wanted to hear the story anyway. She said I wouldn’t be interested, but I thought I should be the judge of that, so I kept begging. One day, my mother gave in. She sat down, opened the book and began reading. But after a few sentences, she closed the book and said that I was too young for the story. I was hugely disappointed, but I stopped asking her to read it to me.
I don’t know what happened to that book. It was gone by the time I was old enough to read it for myself. I don’t know the title or the author. I wonder why my mother was so determined not to read it to me. Maybe I would have become bored with it after a couple of pages. She gave the impression that it was something forbidden, and that only piqued my curiosity. My mother regularly read me stories about parents who deliberately abandoned their children in the woods and old ladies who liked to eat children for dinner. What could be so horrible compared to that? Maybe I was drawn to the adult novel because the woman on the cover reminded me of an ominous character from a fairytale. To this day, I wonder what was in that book. I guess I’ll never know, and I feel cheated.
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