Part I: The Horror/Purity of Accidentally Calling Your Teacher ‘Mom’
[ Photo of James Island County Dog Park on their official website]
I went to James Island County Park on Saturday. My destination was the dog park, which is located inside the whole facility. It really was gorgeous that day, with the sky being a clear blue and the weather being cool but hot enough for me to roll the windows down without catching a chill. It was a day made for being outside. The only downside of the park is that it costs two dollars per person. While not the end of the world, two dollars to a broke college student is equivalent to one hundred dollars. Nevertheless, I was there for my dog, so I reluctantly handed over my two crumpled dollars to the older employee working the booth. I was then rewarded with a bright smile and a dog treat for my pup in the back.
The exchange was so happy and pure that my mind went blank for a moment. The person turned to me with the same smile and said, “Enjoy your time!” I replied with the same amount of enthusiasm, “You too!” It was not until a few seconds after I drove away that I caught my slip-up and felt my cheeks flush. That was not the first time I said something like that to an employee when I was the customer; most likely it would not be the last as well. But instead of letting the little incident go, I let it fester some more and thought about why that is a common occurrence in society. It’s almost on the same level as accidentally calling your teacher ‘mom’, not on an embarrassing scale (in my opinion, the latter takes the cake by a mile), but in how often it occurs in society.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that when I have that slip-up, it is usually when I am interacting with a person that I genuinely feel comfortable around. This conclusion came from me realizing that when I would call a teacher ‘mom’, it would be because I felt safe around them. The interaction with the park worker was so pure that I felt genuine about wanting them to have a great time, whatever that might look like.
Part II: Little Exercise by Elizabeth Bishop
My name is Mallery McKay, and I was completely clueless as to which piece of prose or poetry truly spoke to me to analyze. I decided to choose a piece of work that dealt with the struggles of mental health, mainly anxiety, as I struggle with a great deal of it. I thought it was so interesting develing into a writer’s mindset of anxiety and how the struggles from it play out in the work itself, format-wise and symbolic.
[ Play Ballerina: Yehezkel Raz]
I love how metaphorical this poem truly gets; it really makes you work for the true meaning of these lines through symbols mainly relating to the natural world. Bishop uses our knowledge and usage of the natural world as a vessel to reflect on one’s personal mental struggles living in our society today.
Bishop starts the first stanza off with immediate tension through the imagery of an approaching storm; this could be symbolizing worries that a person can deal with, looming in the person’s mind, making it all they think about. Then describing the storm as a dog seems to derive the storm from its power, almost domesticating it for the reader.
Bishop uses elements of the sea as the main symbols of her metaphors, like when she mentions the strengths of a mangrove. That refers to a type of tropical tree that is adapted to live on the shoreline and thrive on saltwater when the tide comes and floods its roots. I believe Bishop uses the roots to symbolize how a person can find strength in another, and the beauty of that statement is that it does not have to be just a human. I think the second stanza can be read as finding solace in the natural world or finding something that makes you stronger, whether it be a human or anything else.
I think the most interesting part of this poem for me is how Bishop shows this mental health battle through the storm and how the natural world around it reacts. How the different elements’ reactions showcase different people with their different struggles, like the mangroves and their tough support system or the heron, who flies away but the water still shines behind it, implies that it looks for the best in the worst circumstances. To me, Bishop’s work showcases how people of the same environment can deal with struggles differently because of their own mindset and their own advantages.
I really loved the delight that you wrote! And I loved that you tied in the themes of anxiety and embarrassment in with the poem you analyzed. Yes, calling someone like a teacher mom is so embarrassing, but it does prove that you’re comfortable with someone. It’s interesting how we conflate embarrassment with comfortability in these situations, but they do make the human experience more real. Great work!
Hi Mallery, great post.
Your delight is sweet, and I know we’ve all been there (I’ve literally done the exact same thing to a PE Teacher in middle school… and it was a guy…)
Regarding your podcast transcript, I loved the poem you chose to focus on. My favorite bit of it was about the mangrove — I’ve been working on asking for help when I know deep down that I need it… even though I hate doing it.
I also respect how you talked about your anxiety in this blog post. It’s hard to do that. Further, I like the way Bishop showed his “mental health battle” as you put it. We always wonder about how our own mental health will impact others, so whether it’s a storm or a friend, it’s important to think about that.
Great post overall.
I really appreciate that “whatever it might look like” at the end of your delight, Mallery. That helped to highlight the brevity of your connection, and the way it existed on a level that had nothing to do with actually “knowing” one another’s circumstances. Its entire existence was in that small moment of generous exchange. This seems to me to be the kind of thing Gay could get very excited about. In your podcast section, I benefitted from your calling on the “domesticating” of the storm by the dog (or rather, by Bishop via the dog). It’s a beautiful but challenging poem, and you do a nice job of leading us through some of the more approachable elements. I did want to hear you address the final stanza, which seems to suit the focus you were building here, and is the moment where a person is brought into these scenes that are otherwise nonhuman. (I can’t help but note that Bishop is a she–Elizabeth Bishop is a deeply admired American poet from the mid-20th century. Read more of her work! I HIGHLY recommend “One Art.”)
Hi Mallery! I loved reading about your delight. It reminded me of an important aspect of delights in Ross Gay’s collection of essays we read, which is that finding delight in odd places is more possible than we often think. I too can recall times that I’ve called my elementary school teachers “mom” and felt embarrassed about my mistake, but it happened because they made me feel safe in their classroom. This realization though gets looked over a lot because of how habitual our day-to-day routine can be. A lot about finding delight in things is being present. I find it relatable that you found delight in telling the old lady at the park to also enjoy her time, realized your little mistake, but still were able to experience delight in the purity of your intentions and interaction with her. I also thoroughly enjoyed your analysis of the poem you chose. The poem is heavy in symbolism, which typically makes me steer away from a poem, but your breakdown of its mirroring of mental health made me reread it and also reminded me that patience is an important quality to have to fully appreciate poetry, at least for me.