Poem: “If I Should Have a Daughter” by Sarah Kay

If I should have a daughter, instead of “Mom,” she’s gonna call me “Point B,” because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.” And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried. “And, baby,” I’ll tell her, don’t keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I’ve done it a million times. You’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him.” But I know she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that’s the way my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this. ♫ There’ll be days like this, my momma said. ♫ When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. “Baby,” I’ll tell her, “remember, your momma is a worrier, and your poppa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.” Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you’ve done something wrong, but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don’t ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother

I chose, “If I should have a daughter”, by Sarah Kay as my personal response of a poem. The reason I chose this  poem to write it on because one, it was one that I could understand and two, because I feel as if I can relate to it by having a mom who has three daughters and what her morals are for helping us grow.

In Sarah’s poem what I have found that she is trying to portray is the way she is going to take care or raise her daughter if she was to have one. She tells us how she going to get her daughter to look at a different point of life by looking at this a different way ,and how she’ll paint space of the back of her hand so she’ll know it before she can say . ‘I know it like the back of my hand”. Just like every mom she has a way of how she wants to raise her daughter and this is how she wants to raise hers. Another part of her poem that stuck out was about how cruel the world can be. As she referred the world is like sugar that it crumbs and breaks but don’t be afraid to stick out your tongue out and taste it.

The way that is poem connects to me is because of how my mom has three daughters. Just as Sara Kay had morals and ways of how she is going to raise her daughter just as much does my mom have. /My mother probably had and probably still does have ideas of how she wants her daughter to turn out and having certain morals that she wanted us to be raised up on. An example of one of my moms morals is us to be raised up in a Christian church and to love the lord just as she does and that is what she did.

The theme that I find that is in this poem is parent hood. I find that in the poem really shows what parents go through before having a child and what kind of life they have planned out for them. All parents have there worries whether or not they are going to be a good parents or not for there child and having an idea of how they are going to raise them because that is was how they were raised.

I personally find that this poem is very inspiring for other and for new moms who want a good life for there daughter or child. It gives you a great sense of what a mother goes through. Sarah Kay give a great representation of this in her poem. It shows you that even before the child is born parents are worrying about there child’s future or whether there going to be a good parent of not.