To a Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was born on May 27, 1932 in New York. She is an American poet who is known for her writing about subjects like motherhood and family life. She is the mother of three children, one daugther and two sons.


To a Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.


Analysis:
The very title of this poem tells the reader the situation. The situation is that a daughter is leaving home. The mother of this daughter is recounting another time when the daughter left home. The mother is remembering when her daughter first learned how to ride a bike. She remembers her little girl riding away from her on a bike. Now her little girl is big and leaving home. The setting of this poem is at a park. This is revealed to the reader when the daughter rode her bike, "down the curved/ path of the park." This is the setting of the memory but I imagine that the speaker, the mother, is in a different setting when she is looking back at this moment in the park. The setting of the speaker is unclear. The mother could be standing in front of their house waving goodbye to her daughter or sitting in the car after dropping her off at her new home. Where ever the mother is she is yearning for the past. The author uses a nostalgic tone in this poem to express this. As the mother recounts the memory she uses simple diction. This helps express the mother's happy memories of a simpler past when the daughter was only eight. Now that the daughter is older and leaving for longer than a bike ride the mother is nervous for her child's future. In the memory the daughter "wobbled away" on a bike "down the curved path of the park." Now the daughter will have to wobble away down the twists and turns of life. The park is symbolic for life and the curved path represents its twists and turns. The mother may be nervous for her daughter as she leaves home but she has faith that she will be successful just like she was successful when riding the bike. The poem ends with the author comparing the author comparing the daughter's hair flapping to a handkerchief waving goodbye. This simile connects the memory to the current situation and ends the poem with a goodbye.