This is a response to FeatheredThing's Open Call.

In the summer between third and fourth grade, my family moved away from our idyllic, quaint town in the Shenandoah Valley.  It was the place of my happy childhood.  A small college town where we lived in a fabulous 100 year old home on a quiet street filled with kids, blackberry bushes and an old abandoned mansion at the bottom of the hill.  On summer weekend nights the adults would sit in lawn chairs and drink gin & tonics,  Mrs. K would make homemade peach ice cream and all the kids would play red light green light,  flashlight tag and catch fireflies (the length of time which was determined by the amount of gin the adults were consuming).  In the winter, I would lie on my father's back as we careened down the snow covered hills of the campus on my sled.  My grandparents were two hours away on the coast, and a monthly trip to visit them was always delightful.  My mom stayed home with me and my baby sister and my dad taught at a local college, although he also worked two part-time jobs to provide for his growing family.    He was offered a prestigious job, more than double his salary, and so one morning all our neighbors gathered at our house with donuts and milk and coffee for the adults, and waved to us as we loaded into two cars and followed the moving truck to  Missouri.    

We had a brand new house, in a brand new subdivision. My dad came home with a gallon of chocolate ice cream after work one night and declared, "We will always have ice cream in the refrigerator now."  I was miserable.  I spent the summer on the couch eating popcorn and reading my mother's old collection of Nancy Drew books, and my father's old collection of comics from the 1950's.  My first escape.  I missed my old creaky house and the giant boxwoods I would make my fort in.  My best friend Jimmy and I had matching bikes. Purple.  Mine was the girl version and his was the boy's.  No Jimmy here.  It was hot and dry and barren and the kids were mean. 

The school year started and was not any better.  I was teased and bullied.  I had to get glasses.  I developed horrible allergies and would be unable to breathe at times.  I had to go on massive food elimination diets and my mother would send my lunch in my sister's babyfood jars which didn't help with the bullying.  It was discovered that I had a severe allergy to corn, along with various other things.  Corn products and corn syrup are in everything. And no more popcorn!  One day, my parents set me down. They had news.  I started crying and said, "You are getting a divorce." No, no.  We love each other very much. We are never getting a divorce.  Instead, they told me I had a sister that was 2 years older than I was in another country.  My dad visited her with my mother's support.  A few months later, at the end of the year, they set me down.  They had news. They were getting a divorce. 

My mother, sister and I moved again.  My mother had a master's degree but decided to return to school for another degree, so we moved to a university town.  She worked part-time in a lab and went to school full-time.  We had little money and ice cream in the freezer was once again rare.  I was ten, and became a latch-key kid.   My sister, 6 years younger, and I shared a room.  My mom gave us the master bedroom because it was bigger and I got the top bunk because I was the oldest.  It was there, in that top bunk, that I would curl up with my books.   I read voraciously.  Just about anything.  I meticulously read, line by line, this poem.  I would cover up the line and repeat it.  Cover and repeat. Within a few days, I had it memorized and it is with me to this day.  

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Poem and illustration from : www.jabberwocky.com