Comparing My Papa's Waltz And The Mother

Some people are never ready to be parents. Even when the baby is about to come out, people aren’t prepared for the life of a parent. It isn’t until you hear your child cry that your instincts flare up and you just take control, and in that moment you are a parent. However not everyone takes control in that moment because even in that moment they just aren’t ready. It’s a tragic topic that ties into two poems: “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Both about people who were not ready to be parents, however one was a bad parent and the other one who gave up the choice to be a parent.

In “My Papa’s Waltz,” Roethke writes about what seems to be an innocent dance between a father and his son. On second glance

However this poem raises a few questions. The main question being: Can you be a mother if you aborted your child(ren)? Brooks writes about a “mother” who feels guilty after aborting her child(ren) and how she will never be able to forget them: “Abortions will never let you forget.” The “mother” mourns the loss of life and future of her killed child(ren). She even mourns the loss of her moment to become a parent. “You will never neglect or beat them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.” Saying she’ll never be able to make the wrong or right choices for her child(ren) because she deprived herself of that choice. She also grieves in the fact that she deprives her child(ren) of their futures to be whatever they wanted like singers or workers. She also steals from them their identities and the experience of being someone’s child: “If I stole your births and your names, your straight baby tears and your games, your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths..” However, even though she aborted her child(ren), she still loves them all. “Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you