Many years ago before I born, when my mother, aunt and uncle were small children, myGrandmother Helen Springer Moran began writing poetry, about and for her children.
She began her poems from their perspective and how they saw the world.
She wanted her poems to be published more than most things in life, though I was to learn this much later. She passed away about six months before I was born, I didn’t even know that her poems existed till many years later, when my own mother lay dying.
The one thing besides, having her children around her, that she enjoyed most was having those same poems read to her over and over again. They brought back lovely memories of her childhood to her in her last days.
Many children don’t have the ideal childhood, I was one of them. I wonder if in fact there is such a thing as an ideal childhood or is it only in the imagination of Hollywood?
When I first decided to take these poems my grandmother wrote, lengthen them, and add my own, thereby publishing, Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse, it was first a gift to my mother and grandmother. It was a way for me to honor their memory and the memories of children. I wanted to help people to reconnect with the child within and to bring a link back to families.
Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse, carries with it the best memories of childhood. In both its lessons and its joys, for childhood is full of both.
I was raised in a family of nine, we were very poor. Not every memory of my childhood is good, in fact most aren’t. Yet, my intention was to focus on the best and greatest things that it held.
Those are of imagination, beauty, joy, discovery, and gentle lessons. The lessons that give us boundaries and teach us responsibility without harm, as told in “Punishment.”
Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse, is meant to be read to the young or the young at heart. It was written to help me remember the innocence and joy that we all begin life with and share that with others.
It is a childhood keepsake book, to be passed down between the generations, bridging the gap, between life as it was in the past and life that is yet to be.
My hope is that it will bring joy, wonder, and imagination back to the world. Today, we live in such a fast paced technological society; it seems we have lost so much of life’s pleasure in just being.
