Parent-Child Relationships

"Slow Children At Play" by Cecilia Woloch

vs.

"What I Do" by Douglas Goetsch

These two poems are unique because they address parent and child relationships. These poems are about the same topic but they are addressed in such a different way. Not only are parent and child relationships addressed in these two poems but they’re both similar because they display different child behaviors.

In the first poem, “Slow Children At Play” the narrator, as I assumed, was a mother. She tells the reader about these children who are moving so fast. All the words the poet uses in the first half of the poem are fast, quick or easily pronounced. She says they are hurrying up to wash their hands and get ready to eat dinner before their father gets home.

Then she shifts the mood to slower and uses longer words. She announces the slow children playing with fireflies and making “ohhhs and ahhhs” sounds. These children as well have slow mothers. The most remarkable sentences in this poem is when the poet asks the questions: Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

Those last two lines connected these poems for me. Everyone can look at the last two sentences and get a different image in their head. The image I immediately thought of was: do these children have fathers? If they do have fathers why would they leave them? She says the fast children have fathers who they are waiting for at dinner but the slow children are never associated with having a father. Consequently, I think the father has left them with nothing, and especially left them without food.

In the second poem, “What I Do” a man who isn’t too old but definitely not in his 20s, tells how he resembles his father as he has aged in life. He tells how he never looked at his father as a good person or understood why he made the decisions he did but now that he is in the same shoes or the same age as his father was he finally understands his decision making.

He starts off the poem with an explanation of how he pays his bills exactly like his father did. He tells about a flashback from his childhood when he would repeatedly bring his father coffee as he spent hours slaving at his desk. Not only did he bring him coffee, he cleaned his ashtrays, shined his shoes, anything to get his father’s attention. Even though he made multiple attempts to get his father’s attention but in the end he saw it was never enough in his father’s eyes.

The most remarkable sentence in this poem is when he talks directly about their relationship. He says, “… now that I’m approaching the age he was when we stopped talking.” That is the only direct quote he gives the reader of the status of him and his father’s relationship now. Maybe he understands his father’s decision making because he is in the same position in life. But the questions this poem rises for me is, what did his father do to hurt their relationship so bad?

These two poems are related because it portrays children’s actions and the variety of child environments at home. In the first poem the fast children seemed to have a good life because they had a father and had food on the table. Unfortunately, the slow children had no food on the table and a missing father. In the second poem, the narrator had a father but their relationship was not on good terms. It shows a child thriving for his father’s attention and constant disappointment. Even though there is no definite answer from either of the poems, the hints and small remarks in both poems can have an imagination going wild.

"Waiting For My Clothes" by Leanne O'Sullivan

This poem generated the greatest sense of curiosity for me compared to the other poems we read. Not only is the poem mysterious but it makes you wonder what the poet is trying to get the reader to believe. The title alone is very strange and gets your mind working on why this poem would be named this. The poem tells how a woman is waiting for her clothes to be returned to her while being watched by doctors. These doctors have taken her clothes and her journal – the two things that expose all of her secrets. She feels that if these doctors read her journal then they will know her in every way, “I think of those doctors knowing me naked ... taking my soul from between my ribs” (O’Sullivan 17).

I have many questions about this poem and most of them summarize to ask the question: is this woman insane? After reading the poem over and over again, I concluded that she is in a mental hospital. But why is she in this hospital; what has she done? She claims in the poem, “They hear my voice as they read and think. Who is this girl that is speaking?” (O’Sullivan 18). I get that the doctors are trying to figure out who she really is and if she might have actually committed a crime. Or maybe they’re getting details on her personality to investigate the case for why she’s in the mental hospital. But what if she isn’t insane at all? Maybe she’s a normal human being that lost her husband and was very depressed so they put her in this crazy place. There are so many circumstances for why she could be in this mental hospital, and that keeps me wondering.

The problem is the poet does not answer any of my questions. They are all conclusions from reading the poem. She ends the poem with “Like dreams, my clothes come out of their boxes” (O’Sullivan 18).  That quote alone leaves the door open for a curious mind. She leaves the questions unanswered so the reader can read the poem over and over and still ask so many questions. She wants to leave the reader curious and looking for that right answer. Only the best poems, books, or movies end that way because curiosity leads the mind to another level.

I also think the poet left out so much information because she doesn’t want the reader to know if this was a real life experience or a creative mind. Again, if she explained every aspect of the poem in detail it wouldn’t be as interesting or entertaining and most likely the reader wouldn’t want to reread the poem. This does frustrate me somewhat because I want to know the true answers about what she is talking about. It is such a strange topic to write a poem about but she portrays it into a real life situation and makes the reader feel like he or she is in her shoes waiting on her clothes. This poem speaks volumes.

And you think your life is bad..

Everyone looks back on their childhood and wishes something would’ve been better. Maybe it was a wish for something materialistic or simply more friends. A lot of people go through life thinking they have it so bad, but what if you were deliberately lied to from your parents? The guardians who are supposed to be role models for you, who are to support and protect you, who are supposed to love you. How would that make you feel? How would that create a better wish for your childhood?

In Stitches: A Memoir, the main character David Small is used as a Guiney Pig for radiation treatment which results in him developing cancer. When first getting the book, you don’t expect the emotions to be so loud strictly from graphics. This book speaks volumes and depicts a story of a young boy whose childhood is ripped to pieces from bad parenting and pure neglect.

In the beginning of the novel, David is told by his mother to not play with the wheelchairs or go onto the elevators. And what does he do? Just that. He races down the hallway with his socks on and stumbles upon this little man in a jar. Little does David know he’s looking at an unborn fetus. His brilliant imagination portrays the little man jumping out of the jar and starts chasing him down the hallway. The irony I recognized from this scene was that I see David as the little man in the jar trying to escape from his life. After he gets back to the elevator and back down to his parents he is wacked in the head from his mother because he lost his shoes. She gripes at him saying they don’t have the money for new shoes, but keep in mind his Dad’s a doctor. What doctor doesn’t have money?

Even that little slap on the head leads the path for all of the destruction his parents do to him. The most heart wrenching scene of the book was when David finds the letter his mother wrote to her mother about him having cancer. The way David Small portrays this is so realistic. He shows the letter far away and then picture by picture he gets closer to David’s eyes and starts repeating key words of the letter, especially the boy. Those two pages made my mouth drop. From then on I knew I could not put the book down. I don’t have any children but how could a parent first, not tell their child the truth about his mysterious lump in his neck, and secondly refer to him as the boy. Maybe she just doesn’t know her son’s name or maybe she really is insane?

David from that point on wakes up and stands up to his parents; well he tries. He has looked up to his parents his whole life even after being physically abused and verbally abused but this letter hits home for him. This book shows such hurt and emotion and it makes you wonder how some people live with themselves, especially David’s parents. This book commanded my attention from the first page. It showed such real life experiences that no one should face at such a young age.

Most importantly, this book shows someone who battled his whole life, and then overcame without his parents help. David ends up becoming a famous artist, and now a famous graphic novelist, without help from anyone in his family. I think that alone is enough to make the pain go away, or some of the pain. This book should be landmarked as one of the best graphic novels, if it hasn’t been yet, and I believe it’s a story that everyone should read. After reading this novel, I am thankful for my parents and how wonderful they were to me because it could’ve been so much worse.