Walt Whitman and Regret

When I was a young and single mother, my mother gave me a copy of a first edition of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself . It was bound with a suede cover and I do not think it had a title on the outside cover. Mother had found it at an ephemera auction, or at Hershey one year, I don't remember. She presented it casually, as if the whole thing were a nuisance to her. I remember feeling humiliated upon receiving it, as if I had done something wrong to make her go out of her way to acquire and pass it on to me.

A year or so later, I started dating a co-worker who was studying to be an environmental chemist. At the time, he was unsure of which side of chemistry he wanted to work for: the good guys or the bad guys. Dow, Monsanto, or The Environment. As was my habit toward material things, especially gifts from my mother, who made them all impotent and complicated, I gave the book to this young man with the idea that it might possibly do more to serve the future of Earth in his hands than it would in mine.

It was, and is, a pattern of mine to give valuable personal belongings to others. I almost must give most everything away or I become overwhelmed. Now though, my mother is gone and I am at an age where I am ready to study Whitman by way of holding objects that were immediate, close to him, intimately connected to time and place...and I deeply regret giving this book away. I didn't see the man much after giving him Song of Myself. Not that that would have made a difference, I just wonder if it ever occurred to him that maybe, it was his place to not accept the gift, or to return it. Maybe he sold it or gave it to his parents. It's quite valuable.

Anyway, I wish I had that book again. I miss my mother, and it would be a connection to her as well. Maybe a deeper one than to Whitman. I am too overwhelmed and made tired by other recent events to see clearly on this.