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“Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves,” (Marcelene Cox). In this quote, Cox explains the fast-paced process of parenthood. For many parents, a child’s youth is joyous and exciting, but for many others it can be a scary and overwhelming time. A lot of parents try to hold on to their child’s youth so much that they become terrified when they see their son or daughter actually growing up. This theme of growing up or coming of age is extremely prominent in the poem “Weather Stripping” by Bruce Guernsey. This poem goes along with the idea that growing up is sometimes just as hard for the parents as it is the child. While instead of focusing on the changes or thoughts of the daughter, the author of “Weather Stripping” chooses to focus on the father.
The speaker in “Weather Stripping” is the father of a girl who seems to be around the age of eleven or twelve. In the beginning of the poem, the father seems to be unaware that his daughter is slowly growing up. While she is outside playing in the snow, he walks into her bedroom and does not notice the small details in her room that would clue others in to the fact that she is turning into a young woman. There is a Pink Floyd poster on the wall and a bottle of perfume on her desk that the father does not think twice about. Since the girl’s aunt gave her this bottle of perfume, it is obvious that it is only the father who is in the dark about the changes his daughter is going through.
While everyone else seems to be aware that this girl is growing up, the father remains clueless about his daughter’s age until the end of the poem. When he looks out the window at his daughter playing in the snow, he says, “Still chunky, she busily shapes/ the year’s first snow” (8-9). He acts like his daughter is still a young girl by referring to her baby fat and how she is playing in the...