Can someone plz paraphrase this poem?...i dont understand it?

Question

BETRAYALS At thirteen, I screamed, "You're disgusting," drinking your coffee from a saucer. Your startled eyes darkened with shame. You, one dead leg dragging, counting your night-shift hours, You, smiling past yellowed, gaping teeth, You, mixing the eggnog for me yourself in a fat dime store cup. How I betrayed you, over and over, ashamed of your broken tongue, how I laughed, savage and innocent, at your mutilations. Today, my son shouts, "Don't tell anyone you're my mother," hunching down in the car so the other boys won't see us together. Daddy, are you laughing? Oh, how things turn full circle. My own words coming back to slap my face. I was sixteen when you called one night from your work I called you "dear," loving you in that moment past all the barriers of the heart. You called again every night for a week. I never said it again. I wish I could say it now. Dear, my Dear, with your twisted tongue, I did not understand you dragging your burden of love.

Answer 1

she looked down on her dad, felt embarrased that he worked a crappy midnight job, had a bad leg, and spoke poor english. She probably said to her dad, Don't let anyone know your my dad!! only to realize that her own kids are doing the same the same thing to her.

Now she looks up into heaven, and says dad are you watching this and laughing...I treated you with so much loathing and disrepect most of the time, only to have MY kids turn around and do the do the very same thing to me? Its kind of like, here I thought I was so much better, and yet I find that in the end my kids treat me the same as I did to you!

She feels bad that there was only the one time she told her dad how much she cared about him and wished she had another chance to thank him for all his devotion to her, how much crap he had to put up with from her.

Answer 2

"I propose that the core issue is betrayal -- a betrayal of trust that produces conflict between external reality and a necessary system of social dependence. Of course, a particular event may be simultaneously a betrayal trauma and life threatening. Rape is such an event. Perhaps most childhood traumas are such events." Betrayal trauma theory was introduced: "The psychic pain involved in detecting betrayal, as in detecting a cheater, is an evolved, adaptive, motivator for changing social alliances. In general it is not to our survival or reproductive advantage to go back for further interaction to those who have betrayed us. However, if the person who has betrayed us is someone we need to continue interacting with despite the betrayal, then it is not to our advantage to respond to the betrayal in the normal way. Instead we essentially need to ignore the betrayal....If the betrayed person is a child and the betrayer is a parent, it is especially essential the child does not stop behaving in such a way that will inspire attachment. For the child to withdraw from a caregiver he is dependent on would further threaten his life, both physically and mentally. Thus the trauma of child abuse by the very nature of it requires that information about the abuse be blocked from mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behavior. One does not need to posit any particular avoidance of psychic pain per se here -- instead what is of functional significance is the control of social behavior. "

Answer 3

When this lady was a tenager, she felt ashamed of her dad cos ot his disability. Sounds like he had a stroke, leaving him limping and unable to speak properly. Now, something's happened to her, so she is disabled in some way, and her son feels about her the same way she felt about her dad. She told him once that she loved him, and now wishes she had said it again and could say it now. Hope his helps.

Answer 4

The person speaking disliked his dad when he was a child. When the person speaking grew up and had a child, his son treats him as he did to his own father when he was a child. He feels sad that he acted that way towards his father when he was a child.

Answer 5

I think it's about a daughter (or son maybe) who was ashamed of their dad when they we a teenager- laughing at his flaws. and then, now grown up their own son has become embarrassed of them.