Inescapable genes

Way back, long before I showed any interest, my mother wrote poetry. Had it published in Books of the Month, John O'London's Weekly, Outposts. Here's the start of her short poem, Mastoid Operation:

"Wait here."
Yet there
The white lights glare,
Masked faces stare
In pinpoint honeycomb
Poison beads bone,
Bites chisel as on stone.

"Wait here."

I'd forgotten that one. It concerns someone I know, and evokes a dark night. I am impossibly young, uncertain, close to terror.

Later, on one of my lonely holidays in London, I bought my mother a paperback of John Donne's love poems. For me it was just a book, a gift, the contents meant nothing.

My mother knew poetry didn't interest me and there were no attempts at proselytising. But she sang hymns round the house and occasionally drew my attention to some of the better lines:

There is the throne of David
And there from care released
The shout of them that triumph
The song of them that feast

In my seventies, and for no particular reason, I started fashioning verse, most pretty clumsy. My mother died forty years ago but if she'd been around she'd have found something encouraging to say about my efforts, however half-formed. Of that I am certain. The connection between her stuff and mine is tenuous but it exists. Genes, we're told, are inescapable.

WIP Second Hand (40,017 words)

(Francine) brought them cups of tea which they pecked at hurriedly as they handed out six-packs of Carling. At least the flow of determined teenagers was holding tripartite conversation at bay and she was left to guess at the reasons for her parents’ reactions. They had not contributed to the costs of her education – would have been incapable of doing so – and could hardly accuse her of being profligate with their earnings. That left future expectations. Were they expecting her to support them in their old age? She’d always been prepared to do what was necessary but being obliged to was different.