The Importance Of Father Figures In Molly Peacock's Poems

It took eighteen years for my father to attend my tea party. For this reason, I had trouble forgiving him. Although my story is no where near as brutal or harsh as Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” or Molly Peacock’s “Say You Love Me,” I can relate on a lower level. Father figures are important in a little girl’s life. Growing up I never had that, however, I am more than grateful that over the past two years have been able to form a relationship with my father. Lucille Clifton and Molly Peacock’s poems show the importance of father figures and how the absence of one, whether it is mental or physical, can greatly affect a little girl’s life, like it did mine. Sitting on the miniature-sized table were all the necessities for a child’s tea party. With all my toys
When reading Molly Peacock’s poem, I felt experienced of the same emotions she did. My father was never been abusive and this was the first time I had ever seen him cry. He had just hit a breaking point. Peacock talks about her father’s “baby chokes” while he was sobbing. I can picture and still hear my father’s cries (Peacock, line 20). I could not say, “I love you” and mean it. He was not at the Father Daughter tea parties for girl scouts or the Father Daughter brunches throughout my school years. Why should I have loved him just because he asked? I grew up with a sort of resentment towards father figures. However, I learned to forgive my father. In Clifton’s “forgiving my father,” she describes how her father was “asking for more time” (Clifton, line 4). When my dad began sobbing and asking for me to still love him, it was he who was asking for more time, for a second chance. At first, I acted much like Clifton and thought “there [was] no more time” for him and that “there [would] never be enough time” for him to prove his sorrows and make it up to me (Clifton, line