To a Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was born to a Jewish family in 1932 in New York.  She has been nominated for many awards,  including the Mademoiselle poetry prize. After receiving this award, Pastan decided to settle down in Maryland so she could spend more time with her family.  However, her husband urged her to return to writing poetry, where she served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995.

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.

In To a Daughter Leaving Home, Linda Pastan describes the nostalgic process of children growing up through the extended metaphor of a mother teaching her daughter how to ride her bike.  The poem begins with the mother staying close by the bike.  This stage represents early childhood where a child is more dependent on his or her parents to teach and nurture them.  However, the more the child learned, the more confident he or she felt.  Once the child acquired enough confidence to ride the bike, he or she quickly "pulled ahead" to test her new talent.  This stage of riding a bike correlates with early teen years.  As a teen, we begin to feel more independent and therefore, less reliant on our parents. However, as humans grow, they are forced to face reality.  In relation to the poem, the independence of children represents the distance between the mother and the daughter riding the bike.  However, the longer the distance, the more "breakable" the child is because of her exposure to the real world.  At the end of the poem, Pastan concludes with the daughter pedaling away with “hair flapping behind like a handkerchief waving goodbye.”  This conclusion represents the child’s full independence.  The child no longer needs her mother to nurture and care for her.  Although the child is ecstatic to be fully independent, the mother cannot help worrying.  Just like many parents, the mother knows the struggles that lie ahead of her daughter, but she will not be able to catch her daughter if she falls.