The Waltz

My Papa’s Waltz I believe I am living a good life. My parents love me and provide me with all the things my heart desires, so creating a connection with the child in the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” seemed as an impossible task. Yet, I have made a startling discovery with the child in the poem, and that is the way he and I both downplay the horrors in our lives. The boy in this poem is receiving scars from his father whose senses are muddled up to the point that he isn’t even in this world, though the child only regards the whole situation as a simple waltz. To think of the pain this child receives, and realize furthermore that all this has become the same level of normalcy as a waltz is no less than heartbreaking. The horrors in my life are much less terrifying, but they are none the less terrors in my world. My life is similar to a roller coaster. It seems as if one day, all is perfect, the sun is shining high and bright, a cool breeze blowing around me, and life’s moving at a slow, controlled pace. But then, the next day is as if I’m plummeting into a ground which is just malevolently waiting to eat me alive. My parents are usually happy together, but sometimes it seems as if storms and winds from the outside will succeed in breaking my happy little family into pieces. This fear has brought me close to tears numerous times, but the thing is, tears are something I detest with all my heart. They are a sign of weakness. To evade the tears, I take up the path of not caring. So what if my parents aren’t together? I don’t need to care. This is their problem, not mine. I already have so much to worry about. Broken families are just as happy as the normal ones. There is nothing I can do to prevent this anyways.
To this day, I take the emptiness of not caring in place of the pain and humiliation of tears, just like the little boy who takes the feathery flight of the waltz in place of the scars of abuse.