Baby Book

I am seventy-five
years old,
but somewhere,
on another continent,
the baby book
that my mother made
for me,
still exists.
What could it tell us?
My development
was normal.
I was a pudgy baby,
but a skinny child,
which did not change
for forty years.
The baby book
would not have predicted.
Somewhere, on another
continent,
there are grammar-school
mementos, that
my mother forbade me
to throw away.
I was not the best student,
because I was a dreamer.
I did not want to
learn to read,
and fought against it.
But the world took away
my pre-literate bliss,
and by the third grade,
I was a bookworm.
The mementos could not
have predicted.
When I was twelve,
my father told me
that I had ability
for languages.
He was right,
and the twig
was bent.
Now I speak six
languages,
and have lived
on three continents.
The baby book
could not have
predicted it,
nor the mementos.
For forty years
I have been
a home-and-beach
nudist.
It is one of the joys
of my life,
but the baby book
says nothing.
I am a lover of
truth and beauty,
a seeker of justice,
but the book
and the mementos
say nothing.
They are irrelevant.
When I go back
to that faraway country,
I will burn them.