A Child's Garden of Verses

I woke up missing you so, so, so much Momma.

And I looked at the piano ... covered with cards and keepsakes ... and there was A Child's Garden of Verses ... by Robert Louis Stevenson ... full of the inimitable illustrations by Gyo Fujikawa ... in an edition brought out by Grosset & Dunlap in 1957.

I looked and read and remembered and oh Momma ... it's all here ... this was what in so many, many ways was my childhood with you. This was the birth of imagination and the beginning of love of books and stories and this was the picture of the world that was then and in so many ways is now at the very core of what it means to be in this strange and magical and sometimes frightening and sometimes comforting and always appealing world ...

Oh Momma how I miss you ... for this world too is all amiss ... without you ...