Entry 8

            I read "Mother to Son", by Langston Hughes in 7th grade. Rereading this poem was the same then, as it is now, enjoyable. The mother in this poem is defiantly a wise, older figure in this boys life.
The mother says to her son "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair."
 When reading this line,  I always envision a staircase, a long spiraling staircase, almost like the one that I envision when listening to Led Zeppelin's "stairway to heaven."
The "Stairway to heaven", in my mind,  represents perfection. She is saying life has not been perfect. The main reason I love this poem so much is because at a very young age children are told the wrong things. At a very young age my parents told me I was safe, nothing will go wrong, there will never be any bad days, etc. They told me these things whenever i was in doubt. Now I am older, and life isn't actually sugar coated, and there are bad days, and moods where everything makes me sad and sometimes mad. On those days, I wish my parents had not lied, and instead told me from the start that life wouldn't be perfect. The Mom in this poem doesn't fluff up the truth, she knows if you have low expectations, it is better than having high expectations and then getting disappointed.
            Even though the Mom says to her son,
"Life has Splinters, boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor." She shows a new perspective to that statement, in the next paragraph
when she says "An unperfect life is one worth living".
But in the paragraph in between those two the mom says "Reachin'  landin's, and turning corners, sometimes goin' into the dark." The Mom is saying try things out before they are defiantly 'good' or 'bad'. This reminds me to keep taking risks.
         The last thing I noticed when reading the poem, was I became very aware of voice and tone. There are many grammatical errors, and the dialogue sounds as though it is coming from someone who was never educated. But that also adds to the poem, because she spells out exactly how she feels, and by the end nothing is sugar coated.