from the whole a part

i am from farmers and mechanics and boilermakers
loss of hearing and digits
carrot tops and ginger kids and little reds

i am from tea parties and tree climbing
nail polish and grass stains
barbies and legos
flower fairies and star wars

i am from michigan ice cream and indiana pizza
tchaikovsky and rich mullins
john dog and ria kitty
lewis and jacques and tolkein
our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name and you are my sunshine my only sunshine

i am quietly shouting my independence
identifying with those before
facing my future unafraid




In every year of high school thus far, one of the first english class assignments has been some sort of creative writing piece describing ourselves. This year we were to write poems about how our past has influenced who we are now. Mine opened up this post. I explained it and shared it with my english class, and so now I share it with and explain it to you, my readers. I believe there are four of you now. Hurrah!

The most obvious thing about my poem is probably the rejection of capital letters and punctuation. I really don't like capital letters all that much, and I generally skimp on punctuation in my poems, so Ms. Miller said I could just omit both altogether. She said it reminded her of e.e. cummings, so I decided to take after another one of his stylistic techniques. The title is purposefully ambiguous, especially when heard rather than seen. It says that I'm both a part of the whole and apart from the whole. While I love being a part of my family, I also seek to be something apart from them.

In the first stanza I talk about my parents and other older relatives. The first two parts of the first line are just as they appear (the farmer and mechanic parts), but the third (the boilermaker part) is not. Purdue's mascot is the boilermaker, and a lot of my family members have gone there. On my dad's side, my dad, his brother, both his parents, and his dad's dad all went there. On my mom's side, my mom, her dad, his brother (I think), and several of her first, second, and third cousins went to Purdue. If I go there as I'm planning to, I'll be the fourth generation there in a direct line on my dad's side and the third generation in a direct line on my mom's side. The second line refers to the fact that members of my dad's side of the family are prone to hearing loss and many members of my mom's side of the family are missing fingers or toes from various accidents. The third line is a reference to the fact that I've got red-heads sprinkled all over both sides of my family (including my parents, who both used to have red hair). That would explain why myself and four of my six other siblings have undeniably red hair.

The entire second stanza not only tells about things that I enjoyed as a younger child, but it also shows that I had a wide range of interests. While I liked girly things, I also loved getting dirty and doing some tom-boy-ish things. The third stanza is about memories and old traditions. Whenever we visited my mom's parents in Michigan, we used to go to the same ice cream parlor. They had all sorts of fun flavors. My mom's grandparents live in Indiana, and whenever we visit them we eat Pizza King pizza (it's delicious). For several years, my mom, my sisters, and I used to go see the Cincinnati Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker every winter. That tradition kindled within me a love for Tchaikovsky's music that continues to this day. My dad has several Rich Mullins tapes that we used to listen to on road trips. I can probably sing every single song by now. John Dog was the name of the dog that my older brother got for his fifth birthday. He died just two winters ago at the age of thirteen. We all miss him. Ria Kitty is a stuffed cat I got in Washington, D.C. when I was five. I had lost my Ria Baby and Oatmeal Bear on the subway, so I got Ria Kitty. C.S. Lewis, Brian Jacques, and J.R.R. Tolkein were three authors whose works I read often as I grew up. The last line of the third stanza got chopped in half, but it's still meant to be one line. The first half refers to a family tradition established longer ago than I can remember. Every night we all say the Lord's Prayer together. The second half is a line from a song that my dad and I sang every night when I was little. It had within it a line that we argued about every night as part of the tradition.

The final stanza is just some stuff about appreciating where I've come from, yet wanting to be something a little different that those before me. I pretty much already explained that part when I explained the title.