Carol L. Park: (Video) Interview & Portfolio

This is the transcription of Carol’s video interview about not just her poetry/work, but motherhood & culture (see side):

Before reading, please see our note at the bottom.

C: I am so appreciative to Isha and The Looking Glass Review for the opportunity to have this poem go out to more people. It’s one of many poems that have actually changed me. Writing is a way I find healing and I come to comprehend better my thoughts and feelings and make order of my world. Like many women, I spend an immense amount of time nurturing, and this poem it creates a contrast of two types of nurturing, and I’ll ask you Isha I prepared to read the poem I thought you might like to have me reading out loud, but if your going to transcribe I suppose that is not necessary. 

I: I think a nice reading out loud could definitely help us see the dramatic parts poem or the parts you would like to emphasize. 

C: Okay! I will do that! It’s titled “Tending the Fragile”. Tending the fragile tears cascade from my beloved teen. Stretched on flowered couch, no words or touch can comfort. Spittle at my advice would slime me. After early warmth old droplets softly bend daffodil frogs hollow stems can't carry cups of sunshine up. disaster comes as mollusk oozed out, forging slimy trails their thin tongues, dressed with savage teeth. rip, trumpeters, a spring. I toss the creatures this slip fit stems admire. Fair blooms on stakes, wish for prepay. Prowess with my tender dater Spring.”

I: That was beautiful thank you. 

C: Thank you! Thank you. I wrote this after working in my garden one day and it was during the time my daughter, as kids naturally do, was separating from me emotionally. As kids grow older, the relationship with the parent changes dramatically. They've gone from, hopefully they've had kind and um, affirming parents. They accept what they have to say. They go from sharing their thoughts and feelings to withholding more and more talking to peers or writing in a journal or whatever. So I wrote this during this time and I didn't really even connected with my daughter until later, early in the 1st version of it. It was just about this intense experience I had with the snails and the daffodils. And then later when I was revising my poems, I thought, oh my gosh, this is what I'm going through now with my daughter. She's in her thirties and there's another period of intense separation and she was questioning the norms and aspirations that she was raised with, realizing that she didn't want to be in a heterosexual marriage, that she was unhappy and she's lesbian. And so it was a very natural thing to then go back to this poem and ask this paragraph about my daughter when she was a teen, cause I realized she's still tender, you know, even in 30. I think we were all very tender with our mothers and I decided to make this not about the additional paragraph I added was actually the kind of things that happened when she was in high school. I have this vivid memory of her not just pouring out tears but not being willing to tell me anything about it and being helpless. And this is one of the most difficult things of being a mother. Um, is often we are helpless. We hate to see our kids hurt, but they do, you know, it's just part of life and learning. A couple of years ago, my other daughter who has a daughter had bought new scissors and they adult sisters and she was not supervising her kids at the time. And her daughter hit her, um, ripped, the scissors went into her palm, she cut his cardboard, had quite a lot of force, and all this blood was pouring out. And my daughter is in such a panic. And what was really sweet about that occasion was that my husband and I were on our way to her home as an hour's distance away, but we was in menace and she's like, oh, after my house, we're taking my daughter an emergency. He could be with my other child and you know it and um, and this connection and we have with our, our children. t can last even when they're adults and largely separated from, at least physically and to some degree emotionally. So, um, so that's an example of how deeply a parent can hurt when they see their child in some kind of danger or pain, whether it be physical or emotional. So poems often can take really a decade for me before they're done. Some can be pre done in a few days. Lately I've written one that's about a different nurturing relationship I have with a godson who is on the autistic spectrum, and I'm at a poetry workshop and hearing lots of things about poems and reading and analyzing, and so I'm carrying a lot more into my poetry writing than when I wrote this first word of this poem maybe a dozen years ago, maybe 20, I don't remember, but it has been reshaped and reshaped since then, and I encourage everyone who wants to write to allow yourself that process. It doesn't need to come out right the first, second, or third time. And often there's a lot of growth that we need to do, a new insight into life and relationships and what's important to us and what we want to express before a poem can be finished. Any questions about that, Isha?

I: Yes. So it seems that you, um, like me, take a longer time to like write and really revise, so you're a more revision heavy person or do you kind of just like to get your writing one and done?

C: When I was younger as a poet, I did what it as a one-and-done, but as, um, I understood more of the craft and I matured as a person where I wanted my words to be understood by people and have an impact and be published, I needed to revise more and more. but um, this poem that I just wrote, um, started like four days ago, I took a workshop today, and people made a couple of suggestions about reordering and I think it's done and this is part of, of, I think maturing as a poet, I'm just in a very different place than I was a dozen years ago. 

I: Regarding your relationship with your daughter, so I thought that was really beautiful, the connection made, um, and so I was just wondering, do you think you've influenced her in any way, any like how her parenting style is? Do you think you would kind of lead her down this past year down to poetry?

C: Oh yes, both my daughters are artistic. And the one who I was writing about in the 1st paragraph of this poem, um, her artistic, um, nature and drive is um, taking place, namely the visual arts, but also in poetry. So, and she's come to me at times and asking if I could give her, um, kind of comments, revision, give her feedback on what she was writing. and then she was able to get into a prestigious workshop in San Francisco where she lives on the basis which she learned from me, from another poetry mentor in Poetry College Classes. We hate various people to help us, um, develop our craft and understand her voice and figure out how, how to, um, accomplish the kind of compression that a poetry requires. We are constantly on a path with developing and improving our poetry. These are the things we were talking about at our workshop today. And all this line should be taken out because you've already shown it in the poll. You don't need to summarize in this poem. It would have been much weaker if I said something like I probably did do some summary here, let's see, but let's what would be a summary here? I'm king myself in a hole because I didn't think about this beforehand. Yeah, there is a certain amount of summary here and maybe if I to rewrite this today, I would take out some of that, let's see, because it's when you have no words or touch and comfort, that's bordering on summary, but at least in the next slide at my advice would slide me. I'm using some of the language in the following stanzas to apply to the relationship with the daughter. And by the end of the poem, I have slipped into the kind of writing that many poets do as they're gaining their voice and knowledge of craft. When I say "wish for Prepa city," I can hardly say that word, "prowess with my daughter Spring." It probably would have been better if I just written "wish for prowess with my daughter Spring." Shorter is better in poetry, you know. As you go back and revise, we look for what we can take out and still have the poetry mean what we want it to mean.

I: Thank you! This leads into my next question, actually. f you were to be able to verbally expand upon your poem, how do you think you'd go about that?

C: Mean to expand on it, I don't think I would because of the whole idea of compression I mentioned here. I would take out a line to make it stronger. Pr Verbal people, it, it's very important to them to get out our words. and often when I write, I, I, I say things more than one way and the revision process is figuring out, noticing where I've done that and I can take it out and it will still have meaning for the person who if Kate say things in different ways. I've read a wonderful poem by an author describing a different point in time and she's describing a community and there are many different ways you can describe the community with physical images and auditory images. and so it was okay that she kept describing between, but she didn't do it in the same way.

I: Okay, and so with that, do you, have you ever tried writing prose? Do you write prose anytime or is it just exclusively yes?

C: Yes, I've written fiction from the very start. I've always enjoyed writing stories, and I read a novel and had to compress it, and I then had to put it on a shelf for a while and I'll be going back to it. I've also written some more, and I'm less confident in that, but I've been getting some help from fellow writers, and I hope to send some more, more things out again soon. 

I: Do you think your prose new fiction is anyhow like inspired by real life experiences or anything like that?

C: Oh, certainly very much inspired by real-life experiences. I think of someone I know from real life and I put him in a certain situation that they haven't necessarily had, but which allows me to explore that person and to put in words what I see with that person. So, for example, I know a young man who is on the artistic spectrum and he's fairly developed, you know, he can drive a car, and he can speak and so forth and do okay in school if he does the work. But there was a time when he was interacting with my daughters because our families see each other, and I just put him in a situation where he was in a college class and had a tutor and then he got enamored with her. So I start from what I know and then I turn it into a prose story. I lived for six years in Japan and my novel is based on things I read about in Japan that are not my own kids' experiences. I know my kids were much younger then, but I read about the Hikikomori in Japan, the young people who don't want to come out of their rooms and talk to their parents, and about the very sad thing of young teens dating older businessmen for pay. It intrigued me. I wanted to explore the culture there and understand why those things happen. It wasn't my experience or my daughter's experience, but it became a novel. I need to go back and rewrite it from my point of view as a white woman rather than that of Japanese mothers, which is how I initially did it.

I: Even though you are a white woman and there's other Japanese mothers and it seems like you're a very international person, so you get to see a lot of different perspectives. Do you think motherhood, there's some elements to motherhood that are universal? 

C: Yes, absolutely! That's why I thought I could write this novel because I think so many aspects of being a child and being a mother are universal. I also think different cultures, whether it be a religious one or a more of an ethnic one or our s, you know, the cultural behalf of our social environment, um, they dictate different ways of parenting. So, so one of the, the things I learned from that, I learned so much from the Japanese mothers I know I spent time with and they're so much more, um, kind and sweet to their kids. where I come from a background that emphasizes, you know, kids should do what you want and you don't, you know, there's a consequence. but and there's this mutuality sharing that went on. So if I, as a mom with my kids and with another Japanese mom and a kids and she gave them something to eat, should write the same thing to my kids even without asking. For many Americans in the boundary issue, if you're offer, you don't just give sweets, your, your friends, young kids, you would ask the mom 1st, you know, it was okay if I offer them, but from her perspective, my, it's not right that my kids would eat this in front of your kids and not have the same thing. So that shows the kind of cultural nuance that can happen. Um, the differences in how we, um, do relationships between parent and child and friends, to friends, between different culture or social environments.

I: So do you think theres a best way to parent? Is there a certain way that is better? Or will every child end up the same? 

C: Really, really good question. I think there are some better ways. I had some Japanese friends who were sharing dinner once, once in California before we moved to Japan and, and we, I don't remember what the topic was, but I remember what the Japanese man said and he said that works in your system. It doesn't, wouldn't work in the Japanese system. And there are whole systems of communication and relationship that vary between cultures. So that's why things cannot necessarily carry over exactly to another culture. I remember trying to, I got to know on a very close relationship, many Japanese people, especially mothers, because they were doing conversational English classes and homes and, and my kids were going to Japanese schools. So I really had a, b, a close up picture of this. But one of the, the things I noticed that I learned from was how the giving of many little gigs and of food and things that made their kids happy at that time and they're young became a reason that the children would follow along and follow their parents' values. Which is really different from a background like I had where there was physical punishment and you children obey your parents. So, but on the negative side of that, in some there's assumption by their parent that kids will do and can do whatever they have envisioned for them. So this is part of why the hikikomori come about is as the kids get older and the parents want them to follow their vision with, get into a prestigious school and become a doctor, or whatever career path they have for them. And the kids mean that that's not me. They don't want to do it and it, so they don't have even the words to express that for their parents because there's not the same. It's been, not been part of their education, part of their books, part of their psychology, so that, so what they do is just withdraw and not talk to their parents and not come out. So, I think of a Japanese mother I know who has immigrated to the US and her sons have gone through advanced schooling in college and want to become a doctor, like her husband, and, and how she struggled with really letting go of control. She talked a lot about how she feels like Japanese mothers are very controlling and oh, really, you know, I think that's a thing all mothers can struggle with in some ways. A Japan American society at this point and my culture in California, and it'll be different, different spots of the country and different religious traditions and so forth, um, ethnic traditions. But anyway, we emphasize a lot that we can let our kids separate. And I've heard one mother of a high schooler say, um, when you came with high school that she's already dead and she's, she's done, she couldn't expect her kid to do what she wanted her to do. She was a very different way of viewing her kids from someone like, let's say, a Japanese culture where you do really expect them to do what you wanted to do in terms at least of the highest values, which are academics and becoming successful. So, um, so these and also just basic things like tines and orders and cleanliness. So, so, anyway this Japanese friend, she really had a hard time in her um, son was w wanted to divorce his, his wife and I had a hard time too, but I felt like she had a harder time than me. But my, my daughter recently divorced her husband and we spent time with this I Sp friend and her husband because it's such a huge thing for them and her. her Hus is so kind of disgusted that his son would do this. and um, and I think because they hadn't started a decade earlier, recognizing that the kids were individuals and would be making their own decisions. and this is part of the premise that most Americans live with is that of individualism, and that's not a part of every culture. Does that make sense?

I: Yes, perfectly. So do you think the childhood of a women would effect her in motherhood or the experience that she had? 

C: Absolutely! Like I think unless we give a lot of help and work hard at it, we're gonna end up becoming like her mother's. I did not like my own mother and it really did not. well, it'll her. And I think my sister four years older and she also felt the same, you know, when she got married she compared her mother in law to her own mother and daughter, mother law superior. But then when she got older, maybe in her 50 s, she told me I'm becoming just like mom and she wasn't happy with herself. And I also many times I've noticed myself, oh, I'm being kind of, um, controlling or judgmental or I'm having that same kind of voice and it as a, as we have her own kids, we find the same phrases we heard growing up coming to her minds. and I've heard other women express this too. And so it takes a lot of con conscious effort and for me it took a lot counseling and parenting books and talking with other people and praying to become more of the mother you wanted to be. And not that I'm perfect in any way. And um, as I watched my older daughter have children, she has a marriage she stayed with and had children. Parents are kids. She told me when I, I want to share with her books that we used with our kids, and she said, and it's all about teaching your kids morals, like working hard and so forth, she said, Mom, I'm more interested in their emotional development really. You know, I didn't say that. And she gave me a book that she was reading and trying to incorporate and watched with her or with her kids and go, wow, it's a whole different way of parenting. And I wanted to learn it because I feel we have a lot to learn from our kids if we are open to it and as new things, new understandings arise. You know, my parents knew nothing about psychology. I started learning about it when I was a parent and absorbing all I could. But there was a lot out there about how to help your kids, um, learn to put their feelings and words of how to, how the parent can understand why kids has a meltdown. Um, and this books that she, um, passed to me and I came to the title of it later, um, it had these wonderful examples of like a father who his kids had liked her potty training and then starting after she got sick of potty training once start having meltdowns every time she went to potty training she really didn't want to go well. Potty training have nothing to do with her getting physically sick, but it was associated with in her mind. And the father is able to help her with that and talk or put, help her get words, create a story to describe what happened to her. So, so that book and then watching my daughter, um, you do these, um, skills with her own kids who really needed it, um, as has made me question my own parenting. It's like, oh, I wish I'd done that with my kids, but I just didn't know it. It just was that information. That perspective wasn't out there at the time.

Book mentioned: The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

I: Okay, thank you for sharing that. We were talking about how in one of the stories there were the father. Do you think that the father or men in motherhood can influence it or make a difference? 

C: I think fathers are very important for children. I do volunteer work in a jail, and there are statistics showing that a really large percentage of the men, about 70%, did not have a father present in their lives. My husband is a very nurturing person, and his nurturing has made a huge difference for my kids. For example, he had more patience when the kids had pink eye and needed eye drops. He was willing to spend 30 minutes with them, while I was more forceful due to my background. I've learned a lot from him about parenting, and he's probably doing what he saw his dad do. Fathers are very important, and sometimes a kid feels more comfortable with one parent over the other. I knew a Swiss family where the mother had a hard time liking her daughter because their personalities were so different. The daughter was more like her father, who was a jewelry salesman and more extroverted, while the mother was introverted and gentle. This dynamic can make it easier for the daughter to relate to the father.

I: One last question. do you think that if a child begins to lean more towards the father in parenthood, do you think that the mother can be affected by this and like how heavily, to what extent, and do you think that a relationship can be formed?

C: Well, I think it would be easy for the mother to get a little jealous. I spent so much more time with my kids than my husband did. Um, I think that gave me a head start, you know, cause she was going off to work and I was working part-time and taking them to school and going to dog training classes with him this summer and all kinds of things. So, um, it was when they got older, when they're in high school, they seem to have a closer relationship with their dad. And that was hard for me. And um, I remember talking to a friend about it, about the emotions that aroused in me and she said, "Well, you know, I have two sons and as the kids have gotten older, the sons have gotten closer to me. I think that it's harder for kids to become a separate person, um, to, um, it's harder for them to relate well to the same sex parent; they do better with the opposite sex parent," which was an interesting thought. I don't know if that's really true, but it was happening with me and with her. And then as I shared this experience of becoming a wife with my older daughter who was quite open about my relationship with her husband, and then about, um, that brought us closer. And so, she was almost, I don't know, 25 when she got married and um, and then with her having kids and us talking together about that experience, that brought us closer. So, there's these different phases, it's kind of like sine waves where they go in and out where you can be closer at different times. Especially since my older daughter also has an intercultural marriage. She married a Turkish man so, um, I could relate to her on that level because I have an intercultural marriage.

I: Thank you, that answers my question. Again, I wanted to thank you for giving your time to be interviewed like this. And I was wondering do you have any final remarks? 

C: I think this is just a really, really important talk and I’m glad you’ve done this issue and you’re allowing people to add more thoughts in here. Thank you bye-bye! 

*As this is a direct transcription of the interview, we are aware that it may contain mechanical/grammatical errors and usage of filler terms such as '“um” or excessive placement of certain things. Additionally, there may be linguistic errors or confusing arrangements of words. If you would like a polished version of this interview for easier reading, please email us at lookingglassrevieww@gmail.com. Thank you!