Q1 p. 22 end of poem – Turn and Talk: How does this poem reinforce the theme that family makes an important imprint on identity? What additional theme is developed in this poem? Poem:
Six months before my big sister is born,
my uncle Odell is hit by a car
while home in South Carolina
on leave from the Navy.

When the phone rang in the Nelsonville house,
maybe my mother was out hanging laundry
on the line or down in the kitchen
speaking softly with her mother-in-law, Grace, missing
her own mama back home.
Maybe the car was packed and ready for the drive
back to Columbus---the place my father
called the Big City---now their home.
But every Saturday morning, they drove
the hour to Nelsonville and stayed
till Sunday night.

Maybe right before the phone rang, tomorrow

was just another day.

But when the news of my uncle's dying
traveled from the place he fell in South Carolina,
to the cold March morning in Ohio,
my mother looked out into a gray day
that would change her forever

Your brother

my mother heard her own mother say
and then there was only a roaring in the air around her
a new pain where once there wasn't pain
a hollowness where only minutes before
she had been whole