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Karolina Bonn (Class of 2028) is pursing a major in Finance.
This essay was written under the supervision of Ms. Sarah Zentner in Fall 2024.
The Cornerstone ENG 101C Essay Prizes are awarded to the best Educational Autobiographies written in ENG 101C.
Essays are nominated by the instructor and the winners are selected by the Director of the Cornerstone Program.
The dogs are in the tree. I am on the couch. The dogs are throwing a party. I am reading Go Dog Go. I’m sitting on a salmon colored couch with little white flowers, in the middle of the kitchen. We’re facing the fireplace. It’s brick with white panels now, changed since I was three, but I don’t remember what it looked like then. Just the white background of the page, and some silly little dogs driving to the most amazing part in the most spectacular tree, and the words “go dog go.”
My mom taught me how to read when I was two or three. It seems early now, but she tells me I just kept asking to learn. I must have started with something easier, but reading Go Dog Go is one of the first memories I have. I have some earlier ones, but I can never tell if they’re the product of my actual memory, or my imagination bringing to life the pictures in my photo albums. I like the concept of memory, but the way it changes scares me. Each time you recall a memory your brain recreates it. It takes your emotions at the time, and whatever you were told to remember and reforms the memory. The memory may also become what you want it to be.
My junior year of high school English opened with a poem called “My Papa’s Waltz.” Mr. Cheddar handed us this poem and told us to read it, and figure out what in the world was going on. I read:
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
As the poem continues, I’m pulled into a kitchen, but a small one, with barely any room for dancing. The mom is watching, tired of the scene, but they just keep on waltzing as his ear scrapes the buckle of his fathers belt.
I reread this poem twice before the class discussed it, and both times I couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on. To me, his father could have been a drunk and violent man with whom he waltzed with in an orchestrated fight, or simply a hardworking man who loved his son, and danced with him throughout the kitchen when he should have been asleep. These two storylines seemed impossible to coexist, so when it came time to discuss I was ready to follow whichever storyline my teacher told us was right. This however is not what happened.
I like the concept of memory, but the way it changes scares me. Each time you recall a memory your brain recreates it. It takes your emotions at the time, and whatever you were told to remember and reforms the memory. The memory may also become what you want it to be.
Mr. Cheddar laid out the story of a young boy in conflict with his intoxicated father, romping through the kitchen while the mothers watches in disapproval. He was held by the wrist, scraped by the belt, and beat on the head, but this isn’t actually what happened. This is simply the perspective that readers of “My Papa’s Waltz” have come to, but not what Theodore Roethke intended. He was simply a young boy, whose working class dad would come home from work to hold him and toss him around, in spite of his mother’s wishes. His wrist was held to guide him and keep him close, and his ear only hit the belt buckle because he was just a small child. He “waltzed him off to bed”, and the boy clung, to keep his father near. This was one of Theodore Roethke’s most treasured memories, but audiences made it a story of abuse and tension.
While I couldn’t see it before, these two memories do coexist. Roethke was just a boy, and probably created, or remembered this experience in the way that made sense to him. It preserved his relationship with his dad, and encapsulated their love, but yet it still holds the bits of something he was too young to understand. An undertone of tension and conflict.
This poem is sad and confusing, but reading it and striving to understand it intrigued me. I loved being able to separate what the author wrote, what they wanted the reader to see, and what subconsciously came through. Perspective is subjective, but motivated by a desire to understand the subjectivity of others, making it a thing just as compounded as memory. By analyzing poetry and works of literature, there is almost an infinite well of symbolism, meaning and innuendo to look at.
This poem revived my love for reading that I had when I was three. It wasn’t just stories anymore, and the books had a new depth that pulled me in. I read the story on the page, and the story of the author. I could see the vulnerability of memory and the way that perspective drives a narrative. To me, the author became another character, one for me to meet and strive to understand. An example of people to understand in my own world. I was not listening to how people told stories about their lives. Did she really say it with that much attitude? Or, did you do something to put her on edge and make her defensive? Did they really want to ruin your day, or was it a communication error that spun out of control, and now no one knows which way is up.
Honestly, thinking like this changed my whole perspective on the people I interact with. I’ve become better at separating motives and actions, and determining how they connect to who the person actually is. I also think more about my actions, and if they reflect what I want them to. I am also slower to react to situations where someone acts aggressively, because I try to figure out why before I simply mirror their reaction. Overall, it makes me more analytical and a more peaceful member of society.
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