Mrs. Dalloway Said She Would Buy the Flowers Herself

I said I would buy the flowers myself (Woolf 1). For the party I must have flowers. But which ones? There are so many lovely ones how can I bring myself to choose? Even at this flower shop amongst the sea of petals I cannot choose! For they each seem to symbolize something, it all depends on what I would like to be the spirit of the party. And also one must keep in mind tastefulness, for tastefulness is key! Oh, heavens, I remember the awful disaster at Lady Lovejoy's party! There were almost too many flowers; it was as if one was drowning in pollen! 'There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and carnations, masses of carnations. There were roses; there were irises' (Woolf 9). I had the piercing urge to cover my nose and mouth with my handkerchief, yet I refrained for manner's sake. When I saw her 'coming to the window with her arms full of sweet peas' I held my tongue (Woolf 11). No! i wanted to tell her. You will drown your guests with Springtime. Yet I held my tongue, for I was not the hostess, and merely made a mental note to not make the same awful mistake at my own party. I will be a graceful hostess, not the “perfect hostess” that Peter so mockingly hurt me with many years ago (Woolf 54). He meant me to feel it.  He would have done anything to hurt me, after seeing me with Dalloway. Oh, the nerve of that man! But not now, not now, my mind has more pleasant things to attend to.

The weather is fair this June morning, ‘soft with the glow of rose petals’ (Woolf 25). Rose petals! I shall buy roses! But yet, are roses too romantic? They carry a certain sensuality about them that I may not wish to instill at the party, it is merely for mingling for heaven’s sakes! Oh, but roses are so beautiful.  Maybe for another party, another time. Or what about the ones like those at Hampton Court? ‘All the little red and yellow flowers were out on the grass like floating lamps,’ those flowers did have such a gaiety and charm about them (Woolf 58).

If only Sally were with me, she would know what to do. ‘Sally’s power was amazing, her gift, her personality. There was her way with flowers, for instance’ (Woolf 28). If only I had such a gift! ‘Sally went out picked hollyhocks, dahlias- all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together – cut their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls.  The effect was extraordinary…’ (Woolf 28). Oh, if only I had such a gift now!

I know people laugh at my frivolity, but what is life without the little joys? ‘Admirable butlers, tawny chow dogs, halls laid in black and white lozenges with white blinds blowing,’ these are the things that bring contentment and joy to my heart (Woolf 47). It is a woman’s job to keep house and keep herself, so why not do so in the most beautiful way possible? What scorn I would receive if I carried myself any other way! Like Mrs. Kilman! I saw her in a mackintosh the other day, and it took all my dignity to keep from laughing out. ‘First, it was cheap; second, she is over forty; and does not, after all, dress to please. She is, moreover; degradingly poor’ (Woolf 108). I cannot think of anything more humiliating! How I detest that woman. She laps up all of my Elizabeth’s attention, leaving absolutely none for myself, and she dares stand before me and call herself a Christian woman! I myself have no particular ties to religion, but from the purest of observations I know what the Christians value grace and love. Yet this woman embodies neither! ‘Love and religion! How detestable, how detestable they are! The cruelest things in the world…clumsy, hot, domineering, hypocritical, eavesdropping, jealous, infinitely cruel and unscrupulous, dressed in a mackintosh coat…love and religion’ (Woolf 111). There is very little joy in this world, and ‘the odious Kilman will destroy it’ (Woolf 111). My, I am getting carried away; the mere thought of that woman is enough to make my blood boil.

But my Elizabeth, how lovely she is becoming! ‘She was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she almost looked beautiful, very stately, very serene. What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored. For it is beginning…the compliments were beginning’ (Woolf 119). She is so quiet, my Elizabeth, never outward, never loud. She never shares her heart with me, though I bet she does so with that Miss Kilman!

But never mind! It is decided; I shall buy lilies. They are elegant and simple and shall be the talk of the party. Never mind if Miss Kilman thinks me frivolous and shallow, for she is poor and unsightly! I shall cast her from my mind and indulge in the gaiety of the party tonight. Yes, lilies will do. 

The Woman I'd Like to Be

'An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels' (Proverbs 21:19). One of my dreams in life is to be a wife and a mother. That may sound silly seeing as many people do not consider this to be anything abnormal or worthy of dreaming, but for me it is not merely a right of passage or an ordinary job. It is an honorable role, one that prides itself on selflessness and philanthropy. 'She opens her hand to the poor and reaches her hands out to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet' (Proverbs 21:21-22).

I have had many motherly figures in my life, aside from my own mother. These mothers have taken me in under their wings, have nourished me with wisdom and assurance, and have provided me with a security in myself that I would have been lacking if not for them. That is the kind of woman I would like to be, one who constantly reaches out to others, who makes them feel special and safe and loved. One of my absolute favorite passages in the Bible is Proverbs 21:26, saying 'She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.' I picture The Mother. The woman who encourages, nurtures, and criticizes with kindness when necessary. This mother is not focused on vanity or material things, but it is her beautiful spirit that shines through, for the Bible says, 'Do not be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry or beautiful clothes.  You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God' (1 Peter 3:3-4).  This mother is soft-spoken and never gossips, 'for their wives are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.' (1 Timothy 3:11).


I want to be the mother who has warm cookies on the table when the children get home from the first day of school. I want to be the mother who has matching hair ribbons for her daughter's dresses. I want to be the mother who makes signs and posters for her son's sports games. I want to be the mother who takes her daughter for a drive to get ice cream when she first discovers how cruel the other girls can be. I want to be the mother who encourages her children and who is firm and steadfast. I want to be the wife who respects her husband. I want to be my husband's best friend. This is the woman I would like to be.

Acknowledgements

It seems to be a time of tragedy in this life of ours. Over the weekend, one of our own in our school community tragically took her life. A fourth grade teacher, beloved by many, mourned by all. It's horrifically coincidental that our Septimus of Mrs. Dalloway also ended his life. And yet further, that the author of the book, Virginia Woolf, also took her life. All of this has put me in a deep place of contemplation and thought and heavy-heartedness. And again, last night I found out that the dear, dear founder of the camp that I have attended my whole life passed away. The shock that hit me was unbelievable.

I was talking with Ms. Tally about the theme of depression and suicidal thoughts throughout the novel, and I realized that part of the reason it is so hard to detect is because the flourished language and the archaic diction. If the words were translated into present-day English, maybe it would be easier to comprehend and see the common thread. Yet I feel like so much is missed because people do not understand. The first clue to Mrs. Dalloway's tremendous heartache is when she is walking to go get the flowers, thinking, 'Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there she survived?...What was she trying to recover?' (6).  It seems so horrible to me that she makes the idea of death and her demise so trivial and matter-of-fact.

It also struck me greatly how insecure Mrs. Dalloway is. She thinks to herself, '...half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew...for no one was ever for a second taken in.  Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!' (7). It reminded me of how in the Beauty Myth we read that women think that if their appearance was different, their problems would be magically solved. Clarissa goes on to think, 'She would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough, with a skin of crumpled leather and beautiful eyes.  She would have been, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large...Instead of which she had a narrow pea-stick figure; a ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird's' (7). Mrs. Dalloway finds her security in what others think of her, hence the frivolous parties she hosts. She tries to fill the void that she has (possibly due to the lack of relationship that she has with Richard) with outside approval and material things, yet she still feels the hurt. 'It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quire secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which...made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved and making her home delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply of content were nothing but self love! this hatred!' (9). It is almost as if she feels ashamed of this sadness that she cannot shake, of the depression that she feels. And that is what is most sad, that she should feel burdened by her own unhappiness, and that she feels that she is unworthy to feel so.

Three Grandmothers: Deborah and Eleanor

The second of my grandmothers is Eleanor Starr. Gramma Starr. She is my namesake, I am Mackenzie Starr. Her father was an Anglican priest, and as a child she moved to 17 different states. Out of all my grandmothers, she is the one that they write about in stories. The round, soft one with whispy grey curls. The one who has warm cookies ready whenever you pay her a visit. The one who collects porcelain tea sets and had weekly tea parties with you as a child. The one who lives in a house with a white picket fence and a hand-planted garden. Everybody loves Gramma Starr. Everyone. At Christmastime, she bakes hundreds of Christmas cookies and packages them up into beautiful little parcels. She gives one to everyone in town. The bag boys at the supermarket, the assistants at the post office, the guy in the ferry control tower (she lives on an island off of Washington). During Thanksgiving, when we are all together she has us play the thankfulness game. We each receive a cup holding brown, yellow, red, and orange m&m's. Each time we eat one, we have to say something we're thankful for. I receive monthly letters from her, each with a Bible verse on it; each with a life lesson for me to gain. She says, "If I do one of these each month for you, by the time you're my age you could write your own Bible!" Out of all my grandmothers, she is the most cliché. And although we normally use the word "cliché" with a negative spin, it works for Gramma Starr. It's who she is.


The last of my grandmothers is Deborah. That's what I call her, Deborah. After Gramma Starr and my grandpa got divorced, my grandpa married Deborah. They got married when I was four, so virtually she she has been my grandmother for my entire life. I call her Deborah, well, because the rest of my family calls her Deborah. And until recently, the formality of it did have an effect on our relationship. She is from the deep South; she grew up surrounded by peach trees and horse farms, and everyday she would help her dad with the tractor. She adores horses. Absolutely adores them. Growing up, she had several of them. I asked her whether she rode English or Western style, and she laughed. "Sweet pea, I rode bareback! No saddle, no bridle! It's the only real way to ride a horse." That's what Deborah is, wild. She will gladly point out your wrongs in that thick Southern twang, and her wit is sharper than a knife. She's one of those people who has done everything. And I mean everything. She has worked as a crop-dusting pilot, an accountant, a horse trainer, a "house mother" at a home for troubled girls, a counselor, a banker, a sales person. She has even crashed a plane, and clearly she survived.
Before this year, my relationship with Deborah was nearly non-existent. We were always very friendly and could have a good laugh, but there was no depth or meaning to our relationship. And then she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It was devastatingly true, you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. A fear that I didn't know my own grandmother gripped me and shook me to my senses. My next visit with Deborah, I poured myself into loving on her and spending quality time with her. We watched movies, baked cookies, read together. But mostly we talked about horses. It's a common love for us; both of us have been riding for our entire lives. We watched horse movies, looked at horse pictures, we even went out riding a few times. This Spring I begged my mom to send me out to South Carolina to spend my Spring Break with Deborah and my grandpa. This time I could see the effects of her sickness a little bit more. She would get flustered with driving directions, would sometimes put her oatmeal in the microwave three or four times, forgetting that she had done it before. I decided that I wanted to conduct my grandmother interview with Deborah. I wanted to preserve every last memory that I had of her. That Spring Break was one of the best of my entire life. Sometimes, Deborah would tell me to get in her truck and we would just drive. We would drive for miles on the highway, not knowing where we were going, stopping to get Dairy Queen on the way. This grandmother assignment could not have come at a better time for me, because without it, I do not think I would have taken advantage of getting to know this wonderful woman who has been my "background grandmother" for my entire life. I could not be more thankful.

Three Grandmothers: Mykha

I have three grandmothers. Both my parents' parents got divorced, and my mother's parents both remarried. I am extremely close to both my biological grandmother and my step-grandmother on my mom's side. My father's father remarried (I have met the man and his wife only twice), but his mother did not. I wanted to dedicate this blog post to writing about these three remarkable women.

Mykha - My dad's mom is Mykha. She is a 4'5" Vietnamese woman, but what she lacks in height is MORE than made up for in spunk. She wears wedges (at least three inches tall) everyday, and whenever she goes out she wears a fur coat and hat. She has a Vietnamese restaurant outside of Chicago, called Mykha's, and it is her entire life. The five love languages are quality time, acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, and gift-giving, but Mykha has invented a whole new one - food. I grew up spending my days in that restaurant; my parents managed it for Mykha while she managed the food. My mom says when I was a baby Mykha refused to talk to her for a week because she found out about my mom giving me baby-food bought from Whole Foods. One morning Mykha showed up at our house unannounced with a cooler that was more than twice her size filled with fresh mango and sweet sticky rice. "My công (grandchild) will not eat that American crap! No good! You tell me you need food I bring! My công deserve better!" She has lived in America for more than 30 years and still has no idea how to conjugate verbs. She was born in Da Lat, Vietnam, during the last of the French occupation. Her father had died when she was a toddler, leaving her mother and her five siblings on their own. When Mykha was ten, the French general in their village was killed, but no one knew by whom. As a punishment, the French army chose five people at random and shot them. That day Mykha was pulled out of her math class by the Principal who brought her to the local police station; her mother had been one of the five, and she needed to legally identify the body. She and her five siblings went to live with her great-aunt, who owned a restaurant, and that's how Mykha learned how to cook. Cooking is how my grandma tells you she loves you (literally, her English still isn't great). If she loves you, she makes you a feast. If she doesn't like you, she makes you a little less food. Since her 4'5" frame poses several problems, her entire kitchen is custom made; she isn't tall enough for standard stove and countertop sizes. On her answering machine at her restaurant, after the very professional greeting and stating of the restaurant hours by one of her waiters, you can hear a scuffling, a couple of Vietnamese words, and then Mykha comes on the phone and says, "and remember, Mykha love you." I am not joking.

This, my dear friends, is Mykha.

Women vs. Women

We are all fighting for women's rights, women's equal pay, and ultimately women's happiness. We band together, make protests, form communities. It seems that it is our common goal for all women to feel loved, beautiful, and happy.

Women are supposed to be a sex based on community, togetherness. Weddings, slumber parties, even group trips to the bathroom are all something girls do together, and there seems to be this sense of sisterhood, but 'sadly, these delightful bonds too often dissolve when the women reenter public space and resume their isolated, unequal, mutually threatening, jealously guarded "beauty" status' (Wolf 76).

Why are we all against each other?

What I am talking about is how it seems to me that sometimes our biggest bullies are other women themselves. We care about which girls we hang out with. We dress a certain way to impress our friends. We feel the need to one up each other with boyfriends and relationships. Women judge each other because we feel threatened. If that one women is pretty, that must mean that I am not, right?

Wrong.

Somehow, over the years we have developed this very black-and-white point of view that acts as a wooden shudder through which we look at people, and ourselves. If one girl is good at something, we are not. If I am the only single one out of my friends, it must mean that there is something wrong with me. And for some reason, we always lose in the comparison. Further and further we batter ourselves until our self-esteem is left to nothingness. Even those who seem confident, even the ones who put others down, have deep insecurities. They simply learned to take their anger out on other people. 'Women can tend to resent each other if they look too "good" and dismiss one another if they look too "bad"' (Wolf 75). We can't win with one another. So why do we assume that the media is the only issue that we battle?

While we always want to look good for men, in reality most of the time we feel more self-concious around other woman. 'What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?' (Wolf 76). It seems to me that first we need to fix the way we perceive and treat each other before we can expect any kind of reform in the media and society. The public, the viewers, the masses, we control what the media decides to focus on. They give us what we want to see. So if they see a mass beauty revolution promoting self-value and worth and wholesome self-adoration, isn't that eventually what they will have to sell us? It's all up to us, ladies.

Hunger For Thinness 2: The Disease

Eating disorders are the number one most deadly psychiatric illness in the world. Anorexia nervosa, just one of the many different types of eating disorders, has a mortality rate of 20% (NEDA).

I have had many close friends go through eating disorders and so I have had some very up close and personal accounts with the horrors of the disease. And that's just it, most people don't even recognize it as a disease. Most people think the solution for the nearly 70 million people across the world with eating disorders is to just eat (NEDA).

If it were that easy, trust me, people would do it.

The problem is not that women measure their weight in pounds, it's that they measure their worth in pounds. Eating disorders are not about the food, or even really about being thin. They are about a need for control. If everything is spinning out beyond a woman's grasp and she has no control over it, at least she can control what she eats. She can punish those she loves by not eating, she can reward herself with losing weight, she can punish herself by not eating. It gives her a sense of empowerment and control. The irony is that in the end, the disease controls the woman. Not the other way around. That is often why the projected recovery time is five-ten years for an eating disorder victim. It's about giving up that control. 

At first it may just start out as the desire to drop a couple pounds, and before she knows it, that original goal was twenty-five pounds ago. 'At a certain point inside the cult of "beauty," dieting becomes anorexia or compulsive eating or bulimia' (Kilbourne 127). The hard part is that most people associate eating disorders with emaciated models who weigh under 100lbs. The truth is, only 30% of all eating disordered people are underweight. It is completely false for someone to think that a person "looks like they have an eating disorder." Therein lies the problem. Most women think that they are "too fat" to have an eating disorder, so they do not see a need to get help, or are embarrassed to do so. Thinness is just a symptom of the eating disorder, not the problem itself. The core issue is a sense that one is not "good enough" or "worth it." Worth love, care, affection, etc. 

People often think it's for attention. That the woman just wants to be told she's thin or that she's beautiful. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 'What has not been recognized is how it actually makes a woman feel slightly mad' (Kilbourne 123). It is an illness. Would you tell someone with diabetes that they are just doing it for attention? What about clinical depression? Eating disorders are the same. The person often wants to get out of the trap, but finds that the current of society's expectations for thinness are too strong to breakaway from. 

Hunger for Thinness 1: Media

The media has completely warped and skewed women's body image into a filter that only allows negativity, and it penetrates every last bit of self-worth that we have. 'The current emphasis on excessive thinness for women is one of the clearest examples of advertising's power to influence us' (Kilbourne, Slim Hopes). It's true. From the shapes of shampoo and perfume bottles, to the LOW CALORIE-NON-FAT-NO-PRESERVATIVES foods (they might as well say NO FLAVOR) that women see all the time, the ideal of this thinness permeates their everyday lives.

I read a statistic once that girls see 400 ads a day telling them how they should look. Telling them that they are not beautiful enough, thin enough, delicate enough, feminine enough...That's 400 reminders a day tearing down at their self-image, telling them that by themselves they are not worth anything. The only time that most women feel truly comfortable in their own skin is as young children, as 'those who have not been told yet that they are not beautiful' (Kilbourne 104). But as soon as adolescence creeps up, when makeup and boys and clothes finally become of major importance, that confidence begins to shatter.

"Girls reach adolescence and they hit a wall. And at least part of that wall seems to be this incessant obsession with physical perfection" (Kilbourne, Slim Hopes). I remember when I began to feel the pressure to look a certain way. As a young child I was a complete tomboy. I refused to wear pink or dresses or skirts, but would run around in boys cargo shorts and t-shirts while barefoot. I remember seeing my older girl cousins getting ready for church in the morning. They were curling their hair, swiping their eyes with colorful shadows, dabbing on lip gloss. My cousin turned to me and held up her tube of Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers (watermelon flavor to be exact), and said, 'Want some?' I contorted my face into an expression of disgust and scoffed. 'Ew, no.' She rolled her eyes. Secretly, I really wanted to put it on. I wanted to slather the pink glossy stuff all over my lips and taste the watermelon goodness. I wanted to look pretty like them. I felt embarrassed about my want for girly things, it was a new feeling. But later in church, I felt more embarrassed about my boyish appearance.

That's just the thing, we buy into the beauty myth. We willingly spend our money, time, and effort on this thing that degrades us. At first we feel embarrassed about our obsession and want to be beautiful, but then we feel feel even more embarrassed for not being so in the first place. And that's exactly what the beauty myth intends to do, guilt-trip us into thinking we need it, until we are convinced that we really do.

Prom Drama II

I thought I should continue on from my previous piece, and what I would like to focus on is the mindset of a girl attending the event.

Let's be honest. It is a competition as well as a production. Everyone is looking to see who will be the Best Dressed, Most Expensively Dressed, Best Hair, Most Attractive Couple...and also Worst Dressed, Worst Hair, Most Embarrassing Prom Moment...It's sad and quite frankly awful, but it's part of the whole production.

The Prom is the time when girls can impress, shock, and startle their classmates with how beautiful they are. The amount of planning that goes into their unveiling is mind-boggling. I read another article about Prom from the New York Times, and one girl stated that she had begun planning her dress in September. "To avoid the horror of walking into the prom and seeing someone else in the same dress, Shantelle is having her dress made, something a number of her classmates are doing. Even so, she was reluctant to say too much about what the dress would look like before she appeared at the actual event" (Lombardi 1). "'You have to make a grandoise entrance'" she said (Lombardi 1).

I have to admit I am quite torn about this subject. On the one hand I think it is so fun to be able to get dolled-up and do something special with my peers in celebration, yet at the same time I think that the stress that the event puts on us to "look beautiful" is so sad and unnecessary. One lady in the article said "'''These young women wear blue jeans all the time, and it's kind of a fantasy to get in a glamorous dress,'' Ms. Iverson said. ''They watch MTV all the time and they see award shows with girls in amazing gowns. On prom night they can be like the stars they idolize. This is the age of celebrity, and they get turned on by all that. For one night they can dress the part and act the part''' (Lombardi 2). While this is true, it is also sad because it is the essence of the beauty myth. Girls are following the example of what they are told is beautiful, and they are acting. 

Girls relish the compliments that they get on Prom night. 'Oh! You look stunning' 'You look so in shape, I'm jealous!' They take them to heart and try to use them to glue back together whatever self-esteem the high school experience has shattered. Why can't girls be told these things all the time? Why does it just have to be one night a year? Why is it that this is the only time that many of them will feel beautiful? It just goes to show how entrenched our culture is in the beauty myth, and how often we are unaware of it.

The Beauty Myth - Work

It was the Friday afternoon that break got out, and I had to wait for my little brother to get out of his after-school activity. I had time to kill, so I decided to start reading our new book The Beauty Myth. Right as I brought it out of my bag and set it on the table, I heard a voice behind me say, "The beauty myth? What? There isn't a beauty myth." I turned around to meet a boy who is in one of my classes. "Actually, yeah there is. They're referring to society's constraints and expectations that are put on women about their appearance. How it makes women insecure, this myth that they need to look a certain way for acceptance and success."

He laughed. "There is no such thing as a beauty myth." 

"Uh, yes there is," I frowned, not sure if he was serious or not.

"No, there's not. It's stupid, it's made up." He was serious. I found myself getting angry, trying to find words that wouldn't sound too harsh but would convey what I wanted to say.

"Well, yes there is. And the fact is that when people deny that there is a beauty myth, it only reinforces the fact that there is one. If it never gets talked about or recognized, then it just goes on keeping women contained within its lies."

"Bull****." He rolled his eyes.

"Well, I am sorry you feel that way. But it is people like you who are the reason the beauty myth exists. I'm going to get back to reading now." 

Okay, so I was a bit harsh, but I couldn't explain why his comment made me so angry. When I started reading the book and thinking about it, I realized that it is because whether we choose to recognize it or not, all women are somehow constrained by the Beauty Myth, that "there is a dispiriting climate of confusion, division, cynicism, and above all, exhaustion" (Wolf 10). Myself included. 

Being held under the beauty myth is exhausting.

Society has so many standards. And for woman, the first and foremost of those is beauty. The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Makeup, hair products, clothing, cosmetic surgery, the diet industry, all of these are intricate strings of the web that the beauty myth weaves, ready to catch women as they go through life. The further and further they go, the more and more they become entangled in the sticky web. Think about it. As children, young girls have a freedom and security that can be directly connected to childhood innocence/ignorance. As they are exposed to more and more of society's expectations, that security is eroded away, until "there is a secret "underlife" poisoning our freedom;infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions,  terror of aging, and dread of lost control" (Wolf 10).

We all want to be the most beautiful. We alter and change our bodies in order to fit this "culturally imposed physical standard" (Wolf 12). We painstakingly spend hours slathering our faces with creams and powder and goop to look NOT like ourselves. We undergo dangerous surgeries to defy our genetic makeup. 

What's the worst part about it? No one even recognizes it's happening. 

Prom Drama

It's Prom Season, ladies and gentlemen. Time for glittering gowns, overpriced tickets, and exciting predictions of possible Prom couples. Prom is a right of passage. It is the most exciting marker of becoming an upperclassmen. Freshmen talk about Prom, and they're two years away. As a junior this year, I will be attending the dance for the first time.


Prom is a big deal. Personally, I am not a big fan of school dances or functions. I am not on Prom committee, I have not spent months searching for a dress, I haven't been planning for this since Freshmen year, but I know that this is a big deal. People make it that way. Now, I'm not going to lie, of course I am excited to get all dolled-up and go out with my friends. But nevertheless, doesn't this all seem a bit...excessive? That's because it is. A couple of years ago, a girl at school brought up the inequality between guys and girls in terms of the "Prom process." And she's right. As a girl going to Prom, I am supposed to consider: a Prom dress, makeup, hair, shoes, nails, a clutch, jewelry, tickets, a corsage, and a date. Oh, and I forgot transportation, photos, pre-Prom groups, an after-Prom dress, after-Prom arrangements, and other "necessary" duties like facials and spray-tanning (what?). All guys have to do is throw on a tux, and "badabing-badaboom" they're ready. Granted, they do have to ask a girl out, which carries its own heavy load of stress. Nowadays it's become a competition of who can come up with the most creative and exciting ways to ask a girl out.


I read an article in the New York Times from the '90s by Betsy Israel called Prom: The Production. Granted, it's been nearly 20 years since the article was written, but I still think that the title is spot on. It is a big production. Everyone gets so caught up in the dresses and the dates and the parties and the planning that it becomes this exhausting (and apparently exciting?) ritual that often ends in the disappointment of the students. We all know that the excitement isn't for the grand ballroom that hosts the event, nor the awkward meals of some generic type of chicken, but it's for the After-Prom. Elegant, floor-length dresses are traded for slightly tighter (and much shorter) get-ups, billowing hair is unleashed from the bobby-pin clutches, and tuxedo jackets are quickly shed. That's what everyone is really waiting for. 'It's "the after" that the girls themselves have to describe -- "the after" that most parents don't want to hear about' (Israel 2).

So isn't it a bit strange that we should spend all this money and time and effort (ladies in particular) to prepare for something that isn't even the main event? 


One thing I find particularly mind-boggling is the length to which girls will go to transform themselves for the night. I mean, don't they want to be able to at least recognize themselves when they look at the pictures 30 years down the road? The article mentions "the makeovers that change pale, freckle faced girls into bronzed prom women" and it's true (Israel 1)! Hired makeup professionals will douse the upperclassmen girls population with powder and mascara and glitter until we no longer look like the 16-18 year olds that many of us are. One girl in the article, Liz York, refers to Prom as the ' last great moment...this is the best night of your life, like, before your life' (Israel 1). Now as ridiculous and superficial as that may seem (and it is) , honestly that is how it is viewed. We've worked our butts off as juniors and seniors to prepare for college, so shouldn't we have some big event to just let loose before the colossal stresses of university crush us in the Fall?

Journey to America

In beginning Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, her immigration to America made me reflect on my father's similar journey. My father is Vietnamese, born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and he lived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City to foreigners) during the Vietnam War. When he was seven, during the middle of the night, his mother awoke him and his three brothers and sisters and boarded an American helicopter, leaving his father behind. My father describes the journey as never-ending. He says it was almost as if he forgot he had a destination, he just kept going somewhere. There were helicopters, trains, boats, more planes. He remembers spending several nights on an island with the scores of other immigrants. He remembers running around on the sand, sleeping in tents, and smoking cigarettes with his peers. He thinks it was somewhere in Hawaii.

Upon his arrival in America, he and his family were placed with an American foster family, somewhere in the Midwest. The family was just in it for the money, though. They had no intention of nurturing or loving on my father's family. In the morning for breakfast, the American children would get milk with their cereal, my father and aunts and uncles would receive water. The American shouted at my family in harsh tones, speaking louder and enunciating in a way that was not to make them understand, but to degrade them. I imagine they would say insensitive, digging comments. I imagine they would be like Half-Face, mocking them and saying things like, "I been to Asia, and it's the armpit of the universe" (116).

Luckily my father and his family were soon transferred into a far more competent and loving family. They gave my father his first impressions of America, which he remembers vividly. I grew up in America. I never knew anything other than wide paved streets and grocery stores the size of small villages. Jasmine says, 'I wonder if Bud even sees the America I do.  We pass half-built, half-deserted cinder-block structures at the edge of town, with mud-splattered deserted cars parked in an uncleared lot, and I wonder, Who's inside? What are they doing? Who's hiding? Empty swimming pools and plywood panels in the window frames grip my guts. And Bud frowns because unproductive projects give him pain.' (109). I feel that is the difference between my father and I. I will never even begin to understand what our country must have looked like to someone who lived ridiculously below the poverty line in a war zone all their life. Even though I have gone back and visited Vietnam and seen the differences between the two, there is a level of awe and wonder that I never possessed. I imagine his reaction to be similar to that of Jasmine when she discovers the shower. "I had never used a Western shower, standing instead of squatting, with automatic hot water coming hard from a nozzle instead of cool water from a hand-dipped pitcher. It seemed like a miracle, that even here in a place that looked deserted, a place like a madhouse or a prison, where the most hideous crimes took place, the waters should be hot, the tiles and porcelain should be clean, without smells, without bugs." (117). We have an old photo of my dad as a young child in Vietnam. He is sitting in an aluminum bucket, and his mother is pouring a bowl of water over his head. The Vietnamese shower.

My father talks about his discovery of Ponderosa. For those who do not know, Ponderosa is a hole-in-the-wall midwestern steak joint. Most people I know would never dare step foot into a Ponderosa for fear of germs and despicably low-grade meat. My dad's dream as a child was to be able to afford eating at Ponderosa. Although I am beyond thankful for my blessings and fortunate lifestyle, I do feel a sadness at the fact that I will never even begin to appreciate it for what it is worth, or feel awe for what God has given me like my father does.

Stereotypes in Society

I have just begun reading Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee. And immediately, I have been hit with the concept of stereotypes. In the opening lines of the second chapter, our protagonist says, "Bud wants me to marry him,"officially" he says, before the baby comes. People assume we're married.  He's a small-town banker, he's not allowed to do impulsive things.  I'm less than half his age, and very foreign. We're the kind who marry" (Mukherjee 7). Who says? Society? People? For whatever the reason, regardless of who said so, our characters are very aware of the certain expectations that are thrust upon them based on the stereotypes of society. When talking about raising money for foreign countries, Mother says "Think how many people thirty-five dollars will feed out there" (Mukherjee 21). It's true, that the American dollar goes a long way in third world countries, yet the way she says "out there" has an uncivilized, perhaps even barbaric. It alienates wherever "out there" is. Generalizations are based on ignorance. Not necessarily malicious ignorance, just the sheer lack of knowledge. "I was hoping you'd come up with a prettier. Something in Indian"...I want to say to Darrel, "You mean Hindi, not Indian, there is no such thing as Indian" (Mukherjee 10). I have experienced the same thing. I have been asked, "How do you say this in Asian?" Asian, my dear people, is not a language, or nationality. It is a race. People do not mean to be offensive, they are generally curious. The stereotypes that all Asians are the same, that we all speak the same language, teach them to be ignorant.

Stereotypes, whether we like it or not, define us. They are the reason that our society works the way it does. They define our social lives, what schools we go to, what jobs we have...People always try to work against the stereotypes, to step outside of the box that society has constructed of offensive boundaries, yet the reality is that our lives are very much run by them.

I am an Asian American. Vietnamese American to be exact. I am a Christian and I grew up being home-schooled.  And like every other race or background or upbringing, this carries stereotypes. People have said all kinds of crazy, inaccurate comments to me based on complete generalizations, and frankly ignorance. Not truth. Such as:

• "Aren't you like, super good at math?"
• "Oh of course you play violin, you're Asian.
• "I think this is Thai, or Chinese or something Asian. Can you read it?"
• "So you're like, really religious? Do you go to church all the time?"
• "Do you only eat with chopsticks at home?"
• "How is your English so good?"
• "You're Christian. Does that mean you aren't gonna have sex until you're married?"
• "You're a prude."
• "Weren't you scared to live in Vietnam because of the War?"
• "You probably have straight A's, you're Asian."

All of these are clearly, ridiculous. But they have been said to me, many times by multiple people. The thing about stereotypes is that there is sometimes some truth to the generalization. They must have started somewhere. "Baden is what they call a basic German community.  Even the Danes and Swedes are thought to be genetically unpredictable at times. I've heard the word "inscrutable." The inscrutable Swedes. The sneaky Dutch. They aren't Amish, but they're very fond of old ways of doing things. They're conservative people with a worldly outlook" (Mukherjee 11). The first few of the Dutch or Swedish or German people who came into the community must have acted a certain way for others to begin to think this way. But not all, just enough for assumptions to be formed. As it is said, you give an inch, they take a mile. It is the same with stereotypes. People observe the fact that many Asian cultures are dominant in mathematics and science, and they then expect me to go to Harvard or MIT for neuroscience. "Kwang, Liu, Patel, I've met them all. Pole around in a major medical facility, and suddenly you're back in Asia" (Mukherjee 32). The stereotype is so well known it is even in literature. I do not blame them for this. In fact I admit there have been times when I have jeered at myself or jokingly put myself in the box of stereotypes, well, because it is humorous. When I was younger, I used to feel that I had to adhere to the stereotypes to make people like me. It gave them something to laugh at. But no one has ever considered that maybe I do not want the typical Asian-American lifestyle that the stereotypes beckon me to. No one considers the fact that I do not want to become a doctor or a lawyer. I do not want to go to an Ivy League. I would like to become a clinical psychologist, working with teens with eating disorders. My college of choice is a small, liberal arts Christian university that is unknown to most people. 

Jane, the protagonist of Jasmine, is very aware of these stereotypes. She knows that people box her in and assume she is one way. People assume. She is also very blunt about these assumptions and generalizations, yet she is not reprimanding or harsh. She merely acknowledges them, and I appreciate that. It will be interesting to see if as the reading goes on she rises above these or teaches people otherwise, and begin to abolish these stereotypical boundaries. 

Wrapping up with A Handmaid's Tale

This book has been by far the highlight of my High School English experience. I found in so entirely intriguing and captivating, to be honest it made me quite sad to finish it! The last chapter "Notes" was so unexpected, and I found it to be one of my favorite parts of the book. There is so much that I wish to discuss in having completed reading *A Handmaid's Tale* so this particular blog post will be a compilation of a couple different thoughts.

1. The language and diction of the book itself - I thought Atwood wrote so beautifully in this book. Some of the descriptions and images were so unique. Even in describing some of the everyday mundane aspects of life, Atwood found some way to make me look at them in a different light. I suppose that was intentional, and it actually tied in perfectly with the protagonist, Offred. Offred had been stuck in this monotonous Gileadian cycle that in order to keep her sanity and thirst for life alive, she began to analyse the little things and appreciate them and observe them in different ways, just to give herself something to do. One example of this is on the very first page "I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls" (Atwood 13). Most would just say that the gymnasium stank or smelled, yet Atwood comes up with this stunningly accurate and poignant description. Or in the description of Serena Joy's face, she says "...but below them her eyelids were tired-looking.  Not so her eyes, which were the flat hostile blue of a midsummer sky in bright sunlight, a blue that shuts you out...Two lines led downwards from the corners of her mouth; between them was her chin, clenched like a fist." (Atwood 25). Ah, Atwood, you kill me.

2. Though the last chapter did shed some light onto the whole Gileadian society, I still have a plethora of questions! Some of them are:

• What happened to the other races? It is mentioned that the society was formed due to "an age of plummeting Caucasian in most northern Caucasian societies of the time." (Atwood 316). What happened to the other races? Why was the decline only in Caucasians? It never mentions any other races in the book, and only in the last chapter did I even think about the fact that there weren't any races present. Were they allowed to live in Gilead?
• How did Gilead end? - The book never addresses how the Gileadean society came to an end! Did Mayday eventually overthrow it? Did the Eyes and the Commanders eventually realize that their system wasn't working and call it off? Did other countries intervene? 

In all, I am really disappointed that the book ended. I really loved it, it is now one of my favorites! Bravo Atwood!

The Handmaid's Tale: Initial Thoughts III

So in conjunction with my previous two posts, I thought that I would focus on men in religion. In that last blog, I talked about how I viewed women in the book, and women in religion. Interestingly enough, there is not too much about religious men in that I have encountered in the book, just as in society I feel like "men of faith" are something that isn't necessarily celebrated...

You read in textbooks about these "religious giants" and "enthusiastic evangelists," men who reign in newspaper headings for religious uprisings. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Dwight Lyman Moody, all these names are associated with historic religious founding and events. But I feel that as time has gone on, this has greatly diminished, and men are becoming more and more quiet about their faith. I read a statistic a few years back (forgive me, the exact numbers escape me at the moment) which stated that the least religious social group of our society was white, middle-aged men. The most was single, African American women (very interesting but not the topic of this particular post).  I could be very wrong about this, but my hunch is that the reason for this is that men associate religion with submission. That submitting to a Higher Being, without concrete fact or proof of their existence, shows a weakness or a gullibility. Men are supposed to be logical, straightforward, uncomplicated. Faith requires discarding logic, bending your mind around difficult subjects, and is simple yet complicated in a whole different host of ways. Apparently, women are supposed to be the weak ones. We are supposed to need a God to carry us through life. Women are the ones wearing crucifixes around their necks and carrying Bibles in their purses. I rarely see a man with a Bible in hand and a briefcase in the other. It just doesn't happen that way.

In the text, Commanders also seem to serve as religious leaders. For instance, during the Prayvaganza the Commander is the one who speaks on religious terms, and it quite a demeaning fashion i might add. "The Commander continues with the service: "I will that women adorn themselves in modest apparel," he says, "with shamefacedness and sobriety..." (Atwood, 233). "The Commander in charge of this service comes in...This Commander ascends the steps to the podium, which is draped with a red cloth embroidered with a large whitewinged eye.  He gazes over the room and our soft voices die. He doesn't even have to raise his hands." (Atwood, 230).  He goes on to say "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." Here he looks us over. "All," he repeats. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (Atwood, 233). What I noticed for the first time despite having seen it over and over again throughout the book is that Commander is capitalized. Just as God is capitalized. Just as the Pope is capitalized. This was no mistake. Men, apparently, have the right to have a title, they have the right to be "capitalized."

In Catholicism, the Pope is a man, and clergy members are only allowed to be men. In Islam, Imams are men. Even God we refer to as "He" (with a capital H I might add...). Not that I have anything against any of these positions or customs. I just find it extremely interesting that although historically and traditionally religion is headed by men, nowadays men are rapidly shrinking from the scene.

Even in colloquial language, isn't the term "good Christian girl" ? Not "good Christian boy" ?

The Handmaid's Tale Initial Thoughts part II

As a continuation of my previous blog, I wanted to expand a bit on what I feel like are the major women's roles that I have seen in my faith/religious life. As I mentioned before, I have been to several different churches, and although the denominations may have been different, I feel like the roles of women were pretty much the same. Here are some of them:
- Worship team (singers, musicians, etc)
- Childcare - Women are mainly the ones who teach Sunday school.  I guess it goes along with the motherly aspect, our supposed innate ability to deal with and care for children.
- Church Coffee/ Church luncheons - Again, another semi-stereotypical job for women.
- Bible study leaders - women's fellowship is a big deal in my faith. Some of the "religious giants" of our generation are women, surprisingly.

At first glance, these may seem extremely stereotypical and restricted. Note, these are not the only roles that women have that I have experienced. I have dealt with female ministers, missionaries, religious global speakers. And what I have observed about all these women is that they are proud to do what they do. Even in the small actions like laying out cookies and coffee for social time after services, they take each opportunity as a chance to encourage fellowship. They truly find joy in the mundane tasks.

This is where I find the difference between my religious experience and that of the women in The Handmaid's Tale. My religion/faith is used to encourage women and have them step out into the world, whereas the women in the book are repressed and bound and silenced by theirs.

"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection." Here he looks us over. "All," he repeats (Atwood 233).

"Start them soon is the policy, there's not a moment to be lost -  still they'll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won't. They'll always have been in white, in groups of girls; they'll always have been silent" (Atwood 231).

"Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety" (Atwood, 233). Saved by childbearing? Salvation through a baby? That is how women in the book can be saved. In my experience with religion, faith is all you need.

I find this stifling and so powerful. It seems so against everything I have learnt about faith in my life to use it to bind and keep captive. When I was young my leaders would teach me in a way that would instill confidence and self-esteem in me. A lot of my strength and sense of self came from what I believed in. I cannot comprehend or imagine it any other way. I think that this experience of mine that is so opposite to what the women in the book experience allows me to see the severity of the situation. Not only that, it makes me extremely thankful that my experience has never been anything like that.

The Handmaid's Tale - Initial thoughts I

Although just having begun The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, I have already been captivated by the book. I find it incredibly intriguing, and very interesting. But perhaps what interested me the most was the religious or Biblical context of the book. Initially, I did not expect to see lines drawn to religion and the roles of women in religion, but I did spot the connection early on. The first mentioning of religion is in the line, "They can hit us, there's Scriptural precedent" (Atwood, 26). Later, on the same page, the narrator mentions gospel choirs and Sunday School.  And then I came across the line "when the sect wars first began" (Atwood, 53). Immediately I associated this religious context with Christianity, Christian denominations. I, being a Christian, recognized the common words like Scripture (for those of you who may not know, that is the common name for the Bible), and have attended many a Sunday school.

As I read on into the story, I came across direct quotes from the Bible. Aunt Lydia, one of the leaders at the Red School, says, "Not all of you will make it through.  Some of you will fall on dry ground or thorns.  Some of you are shallow-rooted" (Atwood 28). From what I can recall, this quote comes from one of the parables that Jesus told his disciples about being seeds for Christ, and becoming rooted and grounded in faith.  However, in this book, it relates to the roles of women. "Making it through" means successfully carrying out their duties as Handmaids and bearing the children of the Commanders. Falling on "dry ground or thorns" translates to unsuccessfully bearing children, or, ironically, being barren. When a woman is "dry" she cannot have children. If a woman is "fruitful" she will bear several healthy children.  There are also mentions of being "real believers" and "defenders of the Faith." Out of the context of the book specifically, these parables apply to all of mankind.  In the story, they were used at the Red Center in order to preach to the girls. It seems to me that the leaders of the Red Center take these verses out of context and twist them so that it seems that their actions are Biblical and righteous. Later in the

It is a common belief that women are strangled in religion, and by religion, Atwood describes the habits that the women are forced to wear to the unbelievable restrictions put upon them, and one cannot help but wonder back to the Puritan times and the various other similar time periods. Although we are now in the 21st century, and obviously much has changed between now and then, I still firmly say that I have never felt that my religion has debilitated me as a woman, or any of my female friends and family members of the same religion. I would like to call myself a non-denominational Christian. Having grown up moving around from place to place, we were changing churches just as often as schools and homes.  I have attended Baptist churches, Elim Pentecostal, Anglican, Alliance, Church of England, and even an underground church in a missionary community. Thankfully, I never felt limited by my gender in any of these.  In fact, I feel that women are most encouraged to step out in the name of religion. Women are more outspoken about their faith. I would even venture to say that sometimes I feel that men are ashamed to submit to religion or faith for fear of appearing weak. I found it quite interesting that I have yet to hear a man in the book speak of religion or of a Higher Power, yet it is in almost every line spoken by a woman. Tying to the two together, I wonder if the woman's association with religion is out of a perceived weakness or fragility on their own, and if a man's lack of religious ties relates to them wanting to seem as if they do not need anything or anyone, not even God.

Brothers and Sisters Around the World - Andrea Lee

I absolutely loved this piece of writing. For several reasons.

Firstly the imagery was great.  I though Lee did a fantastic job of painting a picture of what the island life was really like. Even in simple mentionings of the mango trees, or "behind the garden stretch fields of sugar cane and groves of silvery arthritic-looking ylang-ylang trees," gives the reader a strong visual of what Madagascar is like (Lee, 37). As I read the piece I could perfectly imagine the hot-sticky humidity and tropic air, it was very vivid.

On a different note I love the character of Hadijah. The Mother, the healer, the queen-of-sorts of the island. Though she isn't mentioned very often or closely examined in the text, she has such a presence about her that she stood out most to me out of all the characters in this piece. "To say she has presence is an understatement.  She got married when she was thirteen, and is now, after eight children, an important personage, the matriarch of a vast and prosperous island clan. She and I have got along fine ever since she realized that I wasn't going to horn in on her despotic rule..." (Lee, 40). The "queenly housekeeper" demands the respect and attention from those around her (Lee, 37).  I find her both fascinating and intimidating. Loving, but harsh. Aged, but witty. Though her actual presence in the text is very minor, I find her to be one of the most captivating and intriguing characters in the story.

The theme of the story is very interesting, yet puzzling. What I got from it was that there is a sisterly bond connecting women across the world. Women who have grown up in completely different cultures, socio-economic statuses, speak different languages… There is a feminine bond that pulls us all together on a deeper understanding of one-another, that is there without even addressing it in words. After the confrontation between Madame and the two girls, they seem to discover this bond, having broken the initial walls between them. “The formal greeting conveys an odd intimacy. It is clear that we are breathing the same air, now, that we have taken each other’s measure,” (Lee 41). After this it seems, there will be room for a relationship to blossom between them. “The curiosity of sisters separated before birth and flung by the caprice of history half a world away from each other.  Now in this troublesome way our connection has been established, and between my guilt and dawning affection I suspect that I’ll never get rid of these two. Already in my mind is forming an exasperating vision of the gifts I know I’ll have to give them…all of them extracted from me with the tender ruthlessness of family members anywhere,” (Lee, 42). I find this passage so beautifully written. It is mysterious yet conveys the unspoken bond between these three women, the bond that exists between women across the world.

This is how I pictured the two girls under the mango tree.

And the woman on the right is how I pictured Hadijah

First Hour, First Thoughts

Initially in reading First Hour by Sharon Olds, I was rather too caught up in the graphic post-birth images that are described there. I'm a very queasy person. Blood. Pain. Description of blood and pain, any of those make me cringe. Anyway, after getting through the poem once, I began to examine more closely the language that she employs. It struck me as strangely beautiful. Strange because it is describing a rather grotesque scene, yet beautiful because it draws similes and connections, particularly the personification of air, that had never even entered my mind. "...the air of the room was blowing me like a bubble." We always think of ourselves inhaling and exhaling air, we don't think of the air as...well...using air. But then what is wind? Air's breath? It sounds quite trivial and rather stupid, but I found it pretty interesting. Or even "The air was softly touching my skin and tongue, entering me and drawing forth the little sighs I did not know as mine." In the beginning of the poem, Olds mentions separating from the mother, and she is not brought back into the poem until the very end. And it seems that for the lines in between, the air takes on this motherly persona that I find quite intriguing. Anyway...that was my random schpeel on the air...

On another note, I was thinking about what being born really means. To be perfectly honest, I think that my best moments as a human were in my infant stage. I hadn't lied or cheated. I hadn't hurt anyone or caused anyone any emotional pain. I hadn't failed. I hadn't begun to make the infinite amount of mistakes that I would soon make....I was completely innocent. Granted, I am not saying that this was the prime of my human life, hopefully my adolescent achievements have overshadowed that time period, but this initial infancy was my most “flawless” time.

“I gazed and gazed, and everything was interesting, I was not free, not yet in love, I did not belong to anyone, I had drunk no milk, yet – no one had my heart. I was not very human. I did not know there was anyone else. I lay like a god, for an hour, then the came for me, and took me to my mother.”

I find this passage hauntingly beautiful. I think that it has this awestruck tone, yet the speaker is very aware that they had yet to experience the best moments in life. It mixes the newborn innocence and ignorance with the wisdom of having lived years of life. It makes me wonder who the speaker is, how old they are, and what events caused them to reflect on their birth in such an analytical manner. Hmm. Just food for though.