To a Daughter Leaving Home

I heard this poem on Garrison Keillor's A Writer's Almanac on wpr.org on Thursday morning July 19, 2007. It speaks to what every parent wants, but dreads - their child's independence. When they are 8, you can grasp intellectually that one day they will grow up and leave you, but it hits the heart when they actually do it.

(Yes, the teenage years - that odd time when the laws of time are suspended and that typically vary from awful to excruciating - really do end and just when they are growing up into people that you can talk to, poof, they leave.)

Poem: "To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan, from The Imperfect Paradise. © W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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.