The speaker is a mother of a child.
The speaker laments about her aging and acts jealous towards her daughter’s
aging. While the mother develops a “fold in [her] neck” the daughter’s “fine
bones of her hips sharpen” (6-8). The mother seems jealous of her daughter’s
aging. Her daughter is growing into her prime stages, while the mother is
leaving that stage.
The mother describes her skin as “dry
pitting” (9). Pitting has a negative connotation. She describes her daughter’s
skin “like a moist precise flower” (9-10). The mother describes her predicament
as an end while the daughter is opening like the petals of a flower. This
comparison between the mother and daughter’s skin has emotional weight. It
tells the story of the circle of life; as the mother grows older so does the
daughter, but the daughter is growing into her glory days while her mother is
moving away from those days.
The speaker than compares the eggs
of the mother and child. The speaker goes so far as saying her eyes are “duds”.
Duds has an extremely negative connotation. This expresses a blue feeling
because the mother describes her aging as wilting away. She will soon no longer
be able to bear children. In contrast the daughter’s eggs are so young they are
about “to snap its clasp” (15). In addition she describes the eggs as “firm as
hard- boiled yolks” (14). Hard boiled is an interesting choice of words. Hard-
boiled describes an egg that is firm from being cooked for a period of time.
Hard boiled eggs are firm but cooked as well. Hard- boiled may also describe
the mother’s eggs because they have been cooked, if you will, for a longer
period of time.
In the last stanza, the speaker
describes this juxtaposition of her and her daughter as replacement. She calls
it an “old story” because it has happened many times before. Yet, even though
it is an old story, it still elicits emotion. Replacement is an old story in a
world sense, but it is not an old story to the mother. It is still devastating
for the mother even though it has happened to other mothers before.
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