"To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan is an American poet famous for writing shorts poems on topics such as family life, motherhood, loss, and the fragility of life and relationships. She is of Jewish decent and was Poet Laureate of Maryland: a poet designated by the government the write poems on special occasions and events.

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.

Although the mother is reminiscing on the incident in the present, the story takes the reader back to the past “when [she] taught [her daughter]/ at eight to ride a bicycle.” She helped the daughter by ‘lopping along/ beside” her. She was surprised as the daughter “pulled/ ahead down the curved/ path of the park” and didn’t crash. This is significant as the bicycle path represents the daughter’s journey through life. The mother teaches and helps the daughter throughout her childhood life as she “wobbled” through it similar to how she did while riding the bicycle. The curved path represents the mysterious and unknown outcomes of life: the future. Life doesn’t always travel along a predicted path, just as how the daughter took the curved path which surprised her mother. The mother worried as she “sprinted to catch up” to her daughter. This is compared to how mothers are concerned about every aspect of their children’s lives that they cannot foresee. It represents the mother feeling left behind as the daughter grows up on her journey as the mother failed to catch up to her daughter whose hair was flapping behind her “like/ a handkerchief waving/ goodbye.” The memory of the incident allows readers to picture a girl riding her bicycle as she matures into a woman right before our eyes to the present time, which is similar to how the mother feels. The reader infers that the mother was a loving one who continues to worry and care about her daughter even as she “grew/ smaller, more breakable/ with distance” along the path of life.