When Our Sense Of What Kindness Is Cuts To The Quick

In the course of parenting
many adults both forget their childhoods,
and mercilessly mine/recycle them-
the better to distance their newer selves
from their former dependence on family.

What parents know, and bury,
is when and how children learn empathy.
Mostly this comes most with attachments
to the living animals immediate to them.
When something soft and friendly dies
that they used to stroke a sense of loss ensues.

I remember being six and at the butchers
with Mother, when she was buying
a rabbit for dinner. They were lined up
in attractive display above our heads
as we went through the shop door.
The distinction between life and death
came to me very sharply
as I followed the conversation;

Butcher; 'Do you want the rabbit skinned?'

Mother, 'No thanks, I'll skin it myself.'

and I knew the same could happen to me.
Only when Mother came skin me
there would nobody asking after me,
and there would be nothing of me
to make the bedside rugs with.
She had made curing rabbit furs
her hobby-to provide for the house
in a vehement bid for self sufficiency.
.