Great, grand parents.

My Mother was entirely Right-wing
or at least, I am sure, she would have been
if it wasn't for the funding.
The woman loved a swell of laughter
at the lower class
and I pretend, at times, the laughter was never aimed at me.  
I close my eyes and picture the small days,
I was novelty,
when she rocked me and bathed me and kissed my Johnson brow.
These were the days when my belly button was still black after  
being cut
from her internal.
I remember a particularly snowy morning,  
in the earlier years,
when I began to relish in an old lady's visits.
She was attached to pastel,  
plain cardigans and pleated,  
floral skirts.
I can still see three-hundred and sixty five times seven
where my main bank of memory is clogged as a filthy drain
with her little, creased face and constant,
unwavering affection from herself and her Husband.
She was not my Mother, of this I was aware.
I never questioned her intentions, not for years, not for my Right-wing Mother who was living loose and living free.
There was an office, lit with majestic natural light from an
unremarkable glass pane, a suit asked for signatures.  
My Mother calmly explained dictionary examples for words such as 'Paralyzed', 'Spasm' and 'Operation'. The woman was white, white as those sheeted ghosts her faith believed in.  
We attended sessions, in her church, where I saw more desperate souls than just her, and just I. These Mediums told us of the spirit world and how I had a gift, I was not sure I wanted. I wrote a poem directed at that poor, weak Mother of mine and requested prayer. Together we, Mother and I, glossed over the fact I put her socks on each morning and how she struggled to allow me to put her panties  
over her wrinkled feet so she could pull them up.  
She couldn't bend.
We laid together on soft sofas and doctors chairs, and physicians's tables and she told me of her father's sexual abuse, of my younger sister who she had given away one New Year's Day when she couldn't cope. Each year after we ran away together to help her ignore all that had gone before.
I was nine years old, nine,
and I had a best friend in her.
My school work took the back seat in the car, as did the old lady and her Husband. We listened to music, we managed as best we could and she had the operation that would either incapacitate her or heal her. Three weeks passed, and she walked because we desperately needed a cigarette, because something had to go right. More time straggled on and she managed to put her socks on by herself, carry the shopping and focus on life again.
Three years moved across us like water. One fine day when the air was crisp and fresh my Mother took a look in the mirror and could honestly say she was healed. I glared at the old lady the day my Mother dropped me off, her wrinkled smile, her Husband's wise fucking manner. I loathed them, they were under my contempt. Why was I there? What had I done for a Mum to turn from a friend into a void parent?  
High school jumped me as if yobs had attacked me in the street. Animals, my age, running riot with no respect for their elders.  
I was old
of mind,  
of body,
of confusion, ill-treated, thrown back into the Cesspit of routine without even an explanation.    
My Mother's kindness and my innocence was silent and still under reality's weight. I refused to see the elderly couple. I thought if my Mother was forced to care for me then perhaps we could have it all back. She had friends of her own, of her own age. They smoked the reefer, they wore heels and tied back their long hair. They danced to Reggae and Roots and Soul. I could see the appeal, how they beat me out.  
I do hope you understand why I wrote this, Nan. I want you to know I was young, I fear I was more than a little naive.
Fighting for approval is part of who I am, it's what I do, it's what I know. I still sleep in your night gown, I wear your perfume and I hope, one day, to be as graceful as you;
you took in a child that wasn't yours.