I Gave Away My Books

I gave my books to my mother,

though I didn’t know that I did.

When she and my dad split up,

I took just a few to the other home,

across the Strait, where I would live

for the next two years, during school terms,

with him and the new stepmother.

I was 15 then, so I left

all my childhood treasures —

Grimm, Hans Christian, Arthur Ransome,

oh, dozens more — crammed

in the cupboard beside my bed

in Mum’s new house, where I visited

for long, glorious, holiday summers;

took them out, stroked them, re-read.

I grew. University,

and then marriage.

Still the visits home to Mum.

‘I should take my books,

have them with me.’

‘Don’t,’ my mother said.

‘If you leave them here, I’ll know

you’re always coming back.’

Why did she doubt?

It was the other so-called home

to which I never returned

once I got clean away.

But I left them there, to please her,

knowing I would return

every year at Christmas.

Until that one year

I looked for my books

and found them gone.

‘I didn’t think you wanted them,’

she said. ‘You left them here so long,

squashed inside that cupboard.

Obviously you outgrew them

years and years ago.’

I gave my books to my mother,

gave them into her keeping,

until they were not kept.

When I was 60, I went to England.

There I found at last

a rare unexpurgated Grimm

to replace the one she got rid of.

The rest have not been replaced.

Beginning the '31 poems in 31 Days' challenge by John Hewitt of Poewar (aka Writer's Resource Center) — who, some years ago, got me started on these things. 

Prompt: Something you gave away as a child (or, at the end of childhood)

Also linking to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Children's Books