The Strange Genes

I hadn't looked at that little collection of poetry for decades. I had a vague remembrance of the poems, what they were about, but not all of them. I'd given a copy of the book to our grandchild, and darned if I really know why, since she's far too young to understand the complexity and nuances in many of the poems. I know why I gave this to her, to hope that she would understand eventually that the emotional conflict she experiences with her mother reflects that same condition which her grandmother experienced with her mother.

The poem was titled "My Daughter My Stranger". She had taken her copy to school and it sits in her desk, perhaps occasionally consulted during reading time. We were visiting on the week-end and she asked if her mother had been an adopted child. Why on earth, I asked her, would she imagine such a thing? What gave her that impression? Your poem, Bubbe, the poem about my mother. I wracked my brain, trying to recall the words of the poem I'd written thirty years earlier.

No, I said to her, I can't recall the inclusion of anything referring to adoption, but I'd get out a copy at home and have a look at it, then discuss it with her. And be assured, I told her, her mother was not at all adopted. And then I hastened to assure her further that it wouldn't matter whether a child was natural or adopted any mother would love her child - no doubt further confusing the issue.

Then, today, I remembered and went down to the basement to look on the bookshelves there for a copy to haul upstairs. I sat down with the slim volume and read first that poem, then others. Yes, there had been a reference to adoption, but it referred not to my daughter, but rather to the child of a neighbour. And I understood that it had been folly to expose a ten-year-old to such emotion-laden poetry, ripe for misunderstanding.

There will come a time, but that time is not quite yet.

The poem?

There was a time not long ago
(only a year in fact)
when she hated everyone else's
poison wafting her way. She used
to say cigarettes are dangerous,
even tried to persuade her friends.

We always had a good understanding
me and my daughter. She has a
talent for the flute
and this summer I bought her
a piccolo. Her favourite record

was Cimerosa's double-flute
concerto. Her needle-adept fingers
sewed embroideries far finer than
my young fingers ever did.
This year she's a senior.

She's embroidered a joint
its smoke spiralling up the
leg of her faded jeans. Our
house rocks with Alice Cooper's
ghastly lyrics. Every evening now

she's out back in the park
behind our house, here in this
middle-class hamlet. A crowd of
boys and girls. Music blares the
autumn air. Matches flare the dark

to light the weeds. She's high,
(She gets high on crowds
and popularity.)
'Everyone thinks I'm a stoner'
she tells me laughing. 'It's
my clothes my fuzzy hair

and the way I talk.' My
daughter has learned. She knows
how to disarm my wary thoughts. Now
my neighbour with the sniffing nose
tells her neighbours that my daughter

is a bad influence on theirs. I
remember her own daughter. Her way
was tight-lipped with the girl
and high-voiced.
She always said the reason her girl

ran wild was because the girl was
adopted. Never can trust strange genes.