Truth Realy is Stranger than Fiction

Only in fiction will you find a girl living in a foreign country falling in love and moving to another country to be with her soul mate. For those of you looking for the real-life example of this, look no further than my mother. She grew up in West Germany in a tiny village (yes, a real village) named Roigheim with her family. She never even dreamed of leaving Germany and had wanted to work at the post office after she graduated school. Not long after finishing school, she and her best friend went to an outdoor concert. There, she met this American stationed in Germany. She was instantly smitten. After some time of what could be deemed courtship, she fell in love, and at the age of eighteen, she left her family and life behind and moved to a foreign country and got married. A few years later, she and her husband had a daughter. Even a few years later, they had another daughter, then a final daughter two years later. Although this is the time when fiction would say they lived happily ever after as a family, the couple divorced and the mom and daughters lived together for close to seven years. Then, one day, the mother met a man that she would marry a few short years later. The happily ever after is still in the process, but it looks like the mother is finally getting her happily ever after from her stranger than fiction life.

A Blessing in Disguise

Two years ago, I started feeling twinges in my shoulder when I was at swim practice. I just wrote it off as normal wear and tear that a swimmer has after thirteen years in the pool, especially one that specializes in swimming butterfly. I would stretch my shoulder, and then get back in the pool to finish out the practice, stretching as the practice wore on. That winter, I let my shoulder rest by not swimming any. The next summer, after less than one week in the pool, I started feeling the twinges again, only this time they were accompanied by pain. Not willing to permanently injure myself, I went to the doctor to find a solution to the problem. I was diagnosed with tendonitis and told to rest my shoulder. That worked, for a few months. When tennis season rolled around, I started having pain and soreness all the time. I went back to the doctor and was sent to a specialist. The specialist told me I was out of tennis for the season. I was so upset because this had been the year that I was really looking forward to and excited about. I would have more experience and hopefully win more than one match. I still went to practices and to support the team at matches. Even though I could not play, something good did come out of it. By being able to listen to our coach’s instructions for all of the players, I think I have grown to appreciate playing. And I’ve also finally learned how to play doubles really well.

Do I Really Appreciate You?

There are always those people in your life that you take for granted. No one is exempt from not really appreciating those around you. Having said that, I can’t help but remember how I used to take my mother for granted. I was ten years old when it happened. A close friend of my oldest sister lost his mother. She had been the only person in his life; he did not know his father, so he and his mother were very close. One morning, he woke up to her having died in the night. When my sister told me this, I was unable to comprehend what that meant. I could not fathom losing my mother the way he did or how he could cope seeing as he was an only child. Even though I was very young, I tried to understand what he was going through with his loss. I tried, but I was unable to. It made me realize that I would not be able to even put on a front like he did if I lost my mom. My mom has always been there for me and I would be lost if she was gone. After that time, I finally appreciated my mom for everything she has done for me and my sisters.

A Sacrifice

It’s always hard to sacrifice something, even for someone you genuinely care for. It was no exception for me when I made a sacrifice for my family. A few years ago, I had a huge swim meet that I desperately wanted to attend because it was the last chance I had to qualify for divisionals in our area of the state. The only problem with it was that it fell on one of the few times of the year that the entire family gathers together. My parents told me that they really wanted all of us to be able to go since we do not see most of our family very often, even though they both knew the meet was extremely important to me. They never directly told me to miss the meet, but the implications were all over the place. For awhile, I had my mind set on skipping the family get-together and go to the meet. I knew subconsciously that it would disappoint my parents is we missed the family time, but I never really thought about it. In the week before the meet, it finally clicked that I should not go to the meet, even if it meant I would not qualify for divisionals that year. I knew my parents were glad that I sacrificed my goal of going to divisionals because they wanted me to spend time with my family.

The Sound of the Trees (Robert Frost)

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

In this poem, Frost is describing the permanece of trees, but in reality, he is really meaning the permanece of a loved one that is always there. When talking of bearing the noise of these trees, he refers to the advice form a wise person that we take for granted in our lives. As we grow older, we begin listening to them with interest. As time passes, we begin to wish to leave and make our own way and make our own mistakes. As we leave home to enter the real world, the trees are still there, talking and making comments, even though we are not there any longer to hear or listen to it.

A Dream Within A Dream (Edgar Allan Poe)

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

This poem is a reflection of Poe's thoughts/delusions that life was nothing more than a dream. The beginning has the feel of a dream and he even says that his days have been a dream. Throughout, he is questioning the reality of life, not knowing what is real and what isn't. Towards the end, he is dreaming of looking forward to the horizon, giving up hope that anything has been real, be it life, love, or anything one could imagine. He wants to keep hold of his dreams, but in the end, he sees that his dreams mean nothing, as they are only within another dream.

Lady Lazarus (Sylvia Plath)

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

This poem is almost like a confession by the author. She shows an insight into herself and why she thinks the way she does. Her constant mentioning of Nazi germany and the Jews shows that she has some type of problem with her german and Austrian heritage. For some reason, she does not like it, going as far as comparing herself to a Nazi lampshade, which have been known to be made of the skin of murdered Jews. This shows she for some reason feels insignificant due to an unknown reason. In addition, she is constantly mentioning death and chances, which indicates that she expects to come back from the suicide attempts, which is how she died shortly after writing this poem.