Coming home from school
mother sat in the kitchen
smoking hand rolled cigarettes,
drinking coffee and staring into space,
knew something was up
cut a slice of loaf
put a thick layer of pork fat on and waited.

“I have tuberculosis and have to go to a sanatorium for a while,
the social people have arranged a place for you at a farm,
it’s not too far from town, and you’re leaving this afternoon.”
She had packed my things in a little suitcase made of cardboard,
she continued to smoke
but I didn’t feel like eating anymore
and mother let me drink a coffee with plenty of milk and sugar.

A knock on the door the man from the social had arrived
his voice was loud
and jolly my dislike of him was intense,
mother didn’t hug me,
I was a big boy now,
but her hand flailed over my head for a second.
At the bus terminal
the posh man from the social gave the driver instructions where to stop
and set me off a wave and he was gone.
After an endless journey trough a landscape of grazing cattle,
spent summer and just as it was getting dark
the bus stopped and the driver told me to leave,
was met outside by a fat, tobacco chewing farmer
and together we walked up a narrow lane to his place.

It was a small seven milking cows farm run by him, his wife, wife’s sister
and two idiot women placed there by the social,
they were eating when we came into the kitchen
but made a place for me
I wasn’t hungry but ate to be polite,
later that night I threw it all up again,
so many things had happened in such a short time that my head spun.
School was an hours walk away at the nearest village,
didn’t like it much
but the good news was that I only had to attended every other day.

Our teacher, there was only one,
was a small mouse like man with the temper of a ferret
was compelled to retell once a week the tragedy that had befallen him,
how he and his wife had gone to bed
and in the morning when he got up she was cold and dead.
First time I heard his story I was greatly disturbed,
but after the seventh time I lost interest
and his great personal loss had become tedious.

In the beginning the other children teased me
because I was small, city pale and spoke different from them
but they soon grew tired of teasing me except a big lad
who never stopped till I when we had woodwork class stabbed him in his thigh
and drew plenty of blood.
After that they left me alone
which I didn’t mind
I had my animals at the farm
they greeted me every morning
when I went into the barn at five in the morning to feed,
muck out and milk the cows and time passed quickly
while I waited for mother to come back from the sanatorium!
and one day after summer when cattle lazily grazed
and the landscape rested
the bus stopped on the main road and a woman got off I knew who it was
but didn’t believe it before she turned to walk up the narrow lane
mother was here to take me home,
I ran to meet her didn’t hug her
but her hand touched my face
I was bigger than her now
and that gave me a sense that I had to protect her,
a slow role reversal was taking place
and in her final years she thought I was her father.