Lisa Parker Grandma

As a grandchild, the greatest feeling in the world is spending time with their grandma. This is especially true when a grandchild has been away at college and has not seen their grandma in an extended period of time. The way Lisa Parker uses imagery and opposition allows readers to visualize the country setting where the grandma resides, along with the relationship between the grandma and granddaughter. The moment the grandma questions the granddaughter about college creates a tempting yet uneasy feeling for the granddaughter as she thinks about answering truthfully. By looking at the moment when the granddaughter cannot decide how to respond to her grandma’s question, the reader finds that the granddaughter chooses against telling her grandma
The granddaughter thinks in her head, “I wanted to tell her about my classes, the revelations by book and lecture, as real as any shout of faith and potent as a swig of strychnine.” (Parker 338). This line in the poem transformed the granddaughter’s thoughts and feelings from relaxed to alarmed. The granddaughter is sitting on a porchswing relaxing with her grandma. The grandma asks the granddaughter how school is going which makes the granddaughter’s mind begin to race. The granddaughter’s mind is starting to race because she wants to tell her grandma the truth about her college friends, but is unsure how her grandma is going to respond. The reason the granddaughter feels this way is because her grandma’s views and her college friend’s views are almost complete opposites. The granddaughter’s friends “wore nose rings and wrote poetry about sex, about alcoholism, about Buddha.” (Parker 338). The granddaughter knows her grandma dislikes nose rings; she also knows that her grandma is a Christian which means she highly dislikes when people converse about sex, alcoholism, and
The grandma senses the uneasiness in the granddaughter’s voice and follows up her granddaughter’s concise statement with, “It’s funny how things blow loose like that.” (Parker 339). The statement made by the grandma means the grandma has an idea of what the granddaughter’s college experience is like. The grandma then uses juxtaposition to compare the granddaughter’s learning experiences to a hickory leaf. The granddaughter is a new leaf that is just now falling off a tree. The tree represents the granddaughter’s family who lived with her until she left for college. The falling leaf which is “blowing loosely” refers to the granddaughter leaving her family for college. She is now on her own and is figuring out how to navigate her way throughout life. Juxtaposition is also used by comparing the grandma to a leaf that has fallen off the tree a while back. The grandma is not blowing as loosely as the granddaughter anymore. The reason the grandma is not blowing as loosely as the granddaughter is because the grandma is full of wisdom. The grandma attained this wisdom by learning from the past experiences in her