Back Story: Holding It Together by Patricia Caspers
Between the ages of ten and eighteen, I barely scraped by as a student. In fact, my high school graduation was a testament to the lack of quality control in the California educational system. I wasn’t a stupid girl, although I thought I was and often acted the part, so when I learned that many pre-adolescent girls begin to suffer from low self-esteem and struggle academically, I reflected on my own tenth grade year and wrote, “Problem Solving.” Fifth grade was the year I realized that my clothes weren’t right, my hair wasn’t brushed properly, my nail polish was sloppy, but it was also the year both of my parents remarried and my Nana (a second mother to me) was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The poem’s scene at the kitchen table represents many years of schooling from that time forward, and “if she would only apply herself” was the phrase my mother heard at every parent-teacher conference, yet no one ever thought to ask, “Why doesn’t she apply herself?”
While I believed I was lazy—too lazy even to learn how to apply nail polish—and incapable, the truth is that I was grieving.
Many of my poems are autobiographical, but I always hope they speak to larger issues. It’s been more years than I care to admit since I was in fifth grade, and I’m certain that teachers and administrators are aware these days that just as a hungry child isn’t going to learn the difference between a crocodile and alligator, an emotionally distraught child will struggle more than necessary to learn long division. Still, knowing that most public school systems are taking the hard financial blows these days, I wonder what’s becoming of the children who, like me, just don’t apply themselves.
In the end, I was lucky. Before she died, my Nana introduced me to poetry, and I never let it go. I learned how to hold it together with words and wrote my way through every tough spot, into college, and graduate school. I know I’m not the only person to survive through writing, so maybe if schools can’t afford individual counseling for our failing youth, they might try a dose of metaphor and alliteration. Obviously, poetry isn’t going to reach every failing student, but it might reach one. It reached me.
I have to say, though, that while I consider myself a productive member of society, I still don’t wear nail polish, and I never did figure out how to tell the numerator from the alligator.
Patricia Caspers’ poems were published in the winter 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal. Find more of her poetry at Fish Head Soup.
I think you've captured here one of the best reasons for keeping poetry and literature alive in our schools! Nice post.
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This is such an insightful post. And the truths within I relate to.
And, I don't wear nail polish either *laugh* - it's always messy, cracked, bubbled, ruined, mere moments after I've tried it. THough I do wear it on my toes
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