“To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Pastan

“To a Daughter Leaving Home” is a poem about the relationship between parents and their children who will eventually leave home and seek independence. Linda Pastan compares the life journey through a metaphor about riding a bike. In the poem, the mother remembers the past memories of how she taught her eight-year-old daughter to ride a bicycle and shares this story with the readers. It is a happy memory that describes the girl’s feelings as “pumping for your life, screaming with laughter” as she takes her first steps towards independence and rides the bicycle. Linda Pastan draws a comparison between learning how to ride a bike with parents’ help and growing up. The usage of figurative language allows the author to compare these two activities as the process of learning to ride a bike is similar to a life journey. However, there is an element of sadness and nostalgia in the poem since the mother is reluctant and scared to let her child move from home. Like riding a bike, the mother fears that her daughter might fall or hurt herself, but she needs to teach her child how to be independent, or she might suffer in the future. Pastan conveys this message through vivid imagery “when you pulled ahead down the curved path of the park, I kept waiting for the thud of your crash,” showing the mother’s fears for her daughter’s safety. Lastly, the author has chosen a specific poem structure to demonstrate her feelings about letting children go. She starts the description with a sense of nostalgia for her daughter’s childhood and safety concerns. Consequently, Pastan describes the joys of life as her daughter is “screaming with laughter” and finishes the poem with a metaphor of goodbye. This structure resembles the process of learning a bike and a life journey where the child finally leaves home to seek independence.