Can you help me understand this poem?
Can you help me understand this poem, "Birthday Present from First Born" by Kit Pepper?
In the mail today, I received a small silver frog—the size of a thumbnail—with no card, letter, or return address. The ends of the envelope were taped back to the middle, and the package fit in the palm of my hand. I knew it was from you as soon as I opened it.
During the first weeks you were gone, I sorted through old photographs, always stopping at our Bruce County campsite: coffee on the Coleman, bedding draped over branches, and your tricking me—the way I’d trick my own mother by offering her a scooped-out eggshell. The difference? She knew, each Sunday morning, how to thank me: praising the perfect beauty of a peacock or ostrich, the rare delight of a giant sea turtle, and my cleverness in finding such treasures. Then she’d take her knife, carefully tap off the top, and call me the instigator of miraculous hatchings.
Eliot measured his Prufrock life in coffee spoons; my mother gave me a childhood laid out in egg cups and Sunday morning rituals. I think something genetic moved through you that morning in Bruce County, on my way to the shower, as you handed me the soap container. There, beside the campfire, I stopped and lifted the lid. Out sprang a little frog, landing on my chest and leaving soapy web prints like footfalls on the moon.
It’s no wonder frogs no longer terrify me or cause me to run the other way, as I did a week before your birth when a colleague wanted to hand me a newborn—limbs bundled, scalp throbbing. Not knowing how to hold strange creatures, I fled from the staff room, thinking it was a close call, not realizing then that sometimes what brushes us outside moves in and takes hold in other ways. You were born; I held you.
In a single moment, you became air-breathing, and I, losing all singularity, plunged, like Demeter, into another world. Tonight, as memory and history press into this tiny shape, I’ll call you to tell you that the small silver frog hangs from a black cord, and its webs, spread wide in the hollow of my throat, touch all words.
3 Answers
As the poem’s title tells you, it’s basically about a birthday present given to a mother by her eldest child (who is now grown up and has moved out of the house). The present is a little silver frog. The speaker of the poem (the mother) reminisces about the event long ago that made frogs significant to her, and about her own relationship with her own mother as well as with this child of hers.
There is a lot more to it than that, but if this helps you understand the very bare-bones narrative that’s going on here you can probably get a lot more out of it as you read it again.
You might also want to look up “Demeter” in a book of Greek mythology so that you will understand why the poet has the speaker of the poem refer to her.
It s about a mother s transformative relationship with her daughter (presumably). Receiving the gift of the silver frog pendant, the speaker remembers a camping trip when her kid tricked her with a soap container containing a small frog, which jumped on her chest. It s implied that she reacted badly (probably freaking out), as the reaction is said to have been different from her own mother s reaction to the speaker s similar childhood tricks with empty eggshells. Their Sunday morning ritual was to have boiled eggs in egg cups, and the speaker would invert her empty shell in the egg cup and offer it to her mum–who then imaginatively pretended it was the egg of an interesting animal, carefully cut off the top, and pretended something wonderful was born (imagery of birth and transformation related to creative imagination as well and nurturing of a child through encouragement). The speaker was changed by her daughter such that she s no longer terrified of frogs or newborn babies (also “strange creatures” she once ran from). She s become more adventurous and embraced life more fully, it seems. The allusion to Demeter s plunge into another world (to Hades to retrieve her daughter, Persephone) relates again to dramatic change–though hopefully NOT suggesting the speaker s daughter is in a hellish place or held captive by a domineering and controlling partner! Another important change is the speaker s “losing all singularity” with her daughter s birth, probably referring to her suddenly caring for another person (her child) as much as herself and/or thinking of their lives as closely intertwined. The gift represents this close relationship which changed her from a solitary individual who was in some ways afraid of life (e.g., icky frogs and newborns). On a cord necklace and resting on her throat, the silver frog at the end also influences or transforms the speaker s words–or, implicitly, her thoughts which the words express. That s a bit more of an analysis. Cheers.
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