I am Growing Up

The winds blow up the leaves on the ground to the cerulean sky, walking in the park of 7th Street, kids were everywhere, running on the grass, chasing each other, and having fun with their parents. A little kid just sitting on the swings, "Dad, higher, higher, a little more higher!!." Listen to these happy laughs, how wonderful it was to be a kid, and ask mom or dad to take us to a park and play all day long, never thought about the sadness. When the tears run down of your face, you can still get a sweet candy cotoon. We have all experience those days your still young, but all things change since the first time I argue with my mom, I knew I no longer can be a child anymore.


"Why are you arguing with your brother again, why don't you just compromise with him, you know that he's younger than you are, and you should act like an adult now" there comes parents' nagging again. Is it because that I'm older than him? Therefore everything I do absolutely wrong! What's fairness do I have on my side? Feeling really angry about them, because what they always thought was that all these unhappy things happened was all my fault, even if I had no part. I really don’t like them, don’t like this world, and everything, because no one know how I feel when they blame me, the hurt they bring about plant deep in my heart, so I cry and cry, because I didn't know what else things I can do rather than that.


I do what I want without thinking about the outcome, and all the things they were talking about, I couldn't even listen to it. But one day, all these things changed. I heard someone was crying so hard in the next room, when I walk to the door, I carefully look into the door, a woman sit on the bed, and whipped her tears with tissue on one hand, I knew that familiar haggard back, at that moment, I feel so helpless, I can't do anything for her but standing outdoor, thought about all the well things she brought to me. I remember that when I start my elementary school, she left me in China, because she had to come to here – America, and by herself, to find a better life for my brother and me. Alone in this strange country, and couldn't even talk to other, she worked hard in the daytime, and study at night. The thought she always had in her mind to keep her strength to stay here: it will be ok, when my kids come here, and we will be happily together again. It had been a really hard time for her to live here. Come back to this right time, crying for my indocile, I hurt her so much, and that's all my fault, because I ruin her hope of mine, and I am really a bad girl. Right after that time, I began to realize that I'm not a little kid anymore, I'm sixteen years old, and I’m ready to become an adult now, throw all the childish thoughts behind. I have already step my first foot in adulthood, nor more a crying little girl, and no more coaxed to sleep. I should do what I can do to help my parents, because I am a part of this family.


As at my age, we know that we should think about more deep things when we doing anything, and we have got to be responsibility for our own action. The main character in "Marigold", Lizabeth, a big girl leaded a group of kids who were more younger than she is, went to Miss Lottie's back yard, an old woman nearly one hundred years old, live by herself, they threw stones at her flowerbed of marigold. And singing "Old witch, fell in a ditch, picked up a penny, and thought she was rich" when they running away, with a jolly smile on their face, but later that evening, Lizabeth overhears her father's crying, because his disability to provide his family, at that time, Lizabeth thought she can’t be a child anymore, at that night, she felt so sorry for what had she done to Miss. Lottie, the stupidest thing she ever done, thought she has to straight up her back, and carry the burden to take care of her family, and help her parents.


Being a kid, playing around with the same aged friends, don't know when the trouble comes, get fret on our heart, that's all people ever want, but that's never what we really had, we should live on ourselves, because it's the rule for living in this world. Guys, it's time to be mature, we're no more a kids, and never thought that you were. If you're still in your childhood, then let's make a big step to your adulthood, there has no time to waste.

Have you ever been whipped by your parents when you were young? My parents beat me seldom, but when they did, it hurt me very much. I like the poem, "The Whipping" written by Robert Hayden. The words he uses in the poem challenge me a lot, and as I read it, I had the same feeling that the boy had. This poem provides me a message that the writer wants us to understand..

Vocabulary seems like the first thing that I want to mention. Some particular words in the poem look familiar to me, but some do not. I often need to use my dictionary to look up words, and write the meaning in my notebook so I can remember them, and review them some other time. The words I need help with are such as exhausted and purged in the last few lines of the poem.

The emotion of the people in the poem is sadness. The boy in the poem was being whipped by his mother. She always treated him very badly. People around the neighborhood heard the boy crying, and the intolerance for her son's wrongs. "My head gripped in bony vise of knees, the writhing struggle to wrench free, the blows the fear worse than blows that hateful words could bring, the face that I no longer knew or loved…" From these words, we could feel how the boy tried to escape from his mother's whipping, and the hateful thought he had of his mother.

While reading this poem, I could feel the hurt on the boy's body, because I had the same experience as a little GIRL. They used to use a ruler to beat me, but not after I was 12 years old. I live with a great peace with my parents since they no longer beat me. "His tears are rainy weather to woundlike memories" Hayden wrote. This child was really hurt by his mother's every whip.

"The old woman across the way is whipping the boy again……" These lines give me a message about how some people treat their children and the common problem in many families. Parents beat their children for their wrongs. They grab their child's hand tightly, beat them with a whip, and scold them. They will neVER stop until they are so tired from chasing and beating the children, and then they let them go free,

After reading this poem, I think these parents should try to talk to their children rather than scold them or beat them, Whipping children will make things worse, and their child will hate them every time they feel those red bloody marks on their smooth skin from their parents' whipping. And when they grow up, they will not listen to them. This will make a lasting impression from their childhood. There should be peaceful conversation between parents and children, to solve their problems together.