Letters About Literature is an annual writing contest, where students submit pieces describing how an author’s work impacted their lives. Katrina Coglitore won the statewide contest and will move on to the nationwide competition. Anya Herne and Karissa Dong were state finalists.
Katrina Coglitore:
Dear Robert Frost (author of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”)
As a child, I had few imperfections in my life. I seldom felt pain, aside from a scraped knee or an unrequited crush. I had the perfect movie family: a little brother, a loving father, a beautiful mother. The genetic lottery granted me my mother’s cute nose, almond-shaped eyes, and thick brown hair.
“You are definitely your mother’s daughter,” relatives would say while they pinched my cheeks and smiled lovingly at my mother.
“Well, duh,” I thought. “I have literally seen pictures of me being born; I know I’m hers.”
When I look into the mirror, I see her rounded nose and squinting eyes blinking back at me, but years of braces took her signature buck teeth away from me. When I was younger, my mother was my idol. When we traveled, we always crossed our fingers and held hands during takeoff, and I knew she was keeping me safe. I would sit for hours in her bed, cuddled under pounds of soft sheets, watching episode after episode of CSI: Miami, but sometimes she would spoil the episodes. She had a knack for solving the mysteries before Horatio Caine.
In sixth grade, we read your poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and that same day, I learned my mother had lung cancer. My life changed, the golden exterior crumbling away to reveal the hardship that would plague my family for years. My mother had Pulmonary Hypertension throughout my childhood, but it didn’t affect our family’s quality of life. The only way you could have noticed her abnormality was the machine connected to her heart through a long clear tube, which she concealed in a variety of Chanel and Balenciaga bags around her waist. She relied on a constant stream of the drug Flolan directly to her heart to survive, but she never let her disability impact our lives. I never classified my mother as a “sick” woman, but now, at age 12, I had to realize that there was a serious possibility that my mother was going to die.
I remember forcing myself to begin my homework that day and opening up my book to your poem. As I stared at the words on the paper, words you crafted 88 years earlier in 1923, I strongly related to your poem. Like nature, my early life was a “flower, but only so an hour,” for the blissful ignorance I had enjoyed since birth was fading away. Your poem evoked emotion I was not familiar with, like helplessness and grief. I truly realized, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
My mother was no typical cancer patient. She was a bundle of vibrant colors in a dull hospital room, patterned pants and bright lipstick on a white walled background. Her IVs fed into a delicate wrist dripping in gold. Her laughter, a strange sound to hear in the Stanford Medical Center, would echo through the sterile hallways, and the doctors and nurses alike automatically knew: Virg was here.
Sadly, as “leaf subsides to leaf,” my mother succumbed to her illnesses in March of 2015 after four long years of suffering. I remember looking out of the hospital window, holding her frail hand while her shallow breaths slowly stopped, and noticing how beautiful the trees looked, with fresh green leaves sprouting from their branches. Your poem came to my mind. I thought, as nature took one life, another’s was just beginning. I realized, just as you stated in your poem, “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.”
I was blessed to have the mother I had, for she was beautiful and loved us with an unmatchable ferocity. Her inner strength was displayed through her impeccable style and grace. Every day she would try not to have a glistening hair out of place or an un-color-coordinated outfit, despite the coughs that wracked her small frame and sometimes produced blood, or the nauseating migraines she suffered as a result of chemotherapy. That was just how she coped. She pulled herself up by her Louboutin bootstraps and went headfirst through life, enjoying every step of the way.
Within the last hour of her life, while lapsing in and out of consciousness, she couldn’t speak, but she motioned to us not to cry. My father, brother, and I held her in our arms as she took her last breaths. When she passed, I tried my best to uphold her strength and continue to wear the brave face that she had worn for years, but I couldn’t even remember the last time she had told me she loved me. I wished for one more day, one more minute with the mother I loved and remembered: the mother with hair, the mother with an infectious smile, the mother who loved Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Watermelon. While many relatives, friends, and strangers came in a blur to console me, I placed a facade of strength up, while behind closed doors, I mourned the loss of the most important woman in my life.
When the leaves began to fall off the trees a few months ago, I reread your poem. I was struck by how applicable it still was to my life, wrenching my heart as much as it had four years prior, but I identified differently with the poem. I was not sad, but rather comforted by your words. After reading, my outlook shifted; instead of feeling resentment toward life for stealing my mother from me, I recognized it as nature. Your poem comforted me in my darkest hour, reminding me that death is only a part of life. Although, like how you described Eden, at first I “sank to grief,” I realized that soon my nature would return to gold. Even though this gilding is temporary, and I know it will subside as “dawn goes down to day,” I cannot help but sigh with relief as a sense of normalcy and comfort blooms in my life after reading your poem, but I still wish my mother could let me crawl into her bed and rub my tummy, bring me her delicious “Mommy-Style” ramen, and tell me I’m going to be okay.
Now, as the trees stand naked and bare in the winter air, my heart is evergreen. No matter how short my early leaf’s flower is, or how suddenly things change for the worse, I can remind myself that although “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” things happen the way they are meant to happen. I miss my mother terribly, but I appreciate the vibrant mark she left on my life. I credit your poem for helping me mature and change my outlook for the better. No other written work has moved me as much as your poem, and I thank you for changing my life with eight lines.
Anya Herne:
Dear Margaret Mitchell (author of “Gone With the Wind”),
I come from a judgmental group of people. We all do, to a certain extent, because society is fascinated with finding and establishing a status quo and subjecting those who do not abide by it to rejection and humiliation.
I tried to be a perfect child when I was younger. I was pliable and submissive, obeying every word of my parents to the best of my ability. I was involved in Math Olympiad, horseback riding, gymnastics, and played both piano and cello. I knew that my parents talked about me and boasted about all of my activities, and this fueled my narrow-minded goal of being a poster child, setting an example for others. It was during this time in my life that I first read “Gone With the Wind,” but at eight years old, the read was more a matter of impressing my peers than gaining actual insight. Consequently, I failed to grasp most of the content that now relates to almost every aspect of my life.
As I grew older, I began to feel this pressure to be perfect more keenly. Everything that I was doing started to feel boring and dull, and as a result, my performance slipped in everything. The scoldings and admonishments of my parents started to sting more and motivate less. After breaking my arm, horseback riding and gymnastics went out the window. I rebelled for the first time halfway through fifth grade, when I blatantly refused to continue with Math Olympiad. It was the first time I had a sense that I could be doing so much more with my time; I could be reading, drawing, even dreaming. I remember my mother's eyebrows drew together in a frown, cutting her face and coming quite close to cutting my heart. I could feel something ebbing out of her, something that years later I discovered was an acute sense of disappointment.
I stuck with piano and cello for a longer time. Whatever it was that I had perceived as passion slowly began to diminish with each failure. Piano was the gentler of the two experiences for me; it started gracefully, continued peacefully for ten years, and ended with some degree of dignity, as I passed my Level Ten exam. But I haven’t felt the smooth ivory of the keys for many months now. The realization that I didn’t get as far with the instrument as I could have aches too much. For a long time I seemed to have found my niche in cello; I had been promoted to one of the most advanced orchestras in my school and practiced regularly. In February of my eighth grade year, I learned that I had been accepted into a prestigious orchestra group consisting of statewide students. The week after that program ended, on a ski trip with my family, I fell and broke my arm for the third time.
It was a blow of massive proportions that I am, in all honesty, still reeling from. My cello playing declined following that; the fall had induced arm problems of painful variety and I found myself unable to practice or play for long stretches of time. I dropped cello only this year, one of the most painful decisions of my sixteen year old life. It still pains me to think about that instrument and the time I shared with it, and shame still bites at me when I think about how I slunk away from it. I would be happier now—I should be happier, at least. Freeing myself from the bonds of activities I had no passion for has allowed me to pursue other paths.
I have become more involved with fashion, from drawing whatever comes to mind to marketing. I have started to read my favorite novels and write stories for pure pleasure. But more than anything else, it has chopped my life into alternating segments of pure enjoyment and burning shame. Shame that what I do earns no medals or certificates, shame that what I do is nothing exceptional.
The plummeting of my parents' expectations of me has been harsh. They make fun of me for it now; my mother complains to her friends of how I have dropped everything because I wasn't good enough. I know they wanted me to go to a prestigious university, and now they tell me that I'll end up at a poor one—if at one at all. “Give up” is probably a phrase I have told myself more than anything else in the past three years. And then I picked up the old, worn copy of “Gone With the Wind” off my bookshelf and read it again for the first time in years. I rediscovered, as Ashley Wilkes so eloquently phrased it, my “passion for life”—my desire to succeed at what I did, no matter what it was. As I turned the pages of the book, the previously shattered pieces of my heart began to glue themselves together, making me feel whole and complete. Reading about Scarlett's increasing ostracization from society and her dogged persistence in achieving what she needed, I realized a key aspect of life that I was missing. Scarlett O'Hara taught me resilience, strength in the face of a not always friendly society and fortitude in the face of failure. Almost all of her actions were shame-worthy. And yet the disapproval that was gathered up and thrown at her somehow did not register as shame. She took that societal disapproval and either ignored it or turned it into a challenge, to prove herself for the better. It's a character strength I could never have dreamed of, never mind integrated into myself, had I not read this book. The opinions of my parents' friends and occasionally even my peers, opinions that would have meant the world to me when I was younger, no longer have any bearing on my decisions or my happiness. “Gone With the Wind” has, indeed, been the wind that has liberated me from so many constraints that could just as easily have boxed me in.
So many things did not work out for Scarlett. The sheer amount of heated scorn thrown at her should have broken her, yet it did not—it did not because she fought back. Had Scarlett given up, as I have so many times considered doing, she would have starved. “Gone With the Wind” has taught me how to harden myself against failure and against scornful and critical societies.
Most of all, though, it taught me that by being my own champion, I can succeed in whatever I want to or need to.
Karissa Dong:
Dear J.D. Salinger (author of “Catcher in the Rye”),
I read your novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” for the first time in my freshman year.
At the time, I was too naïve to fully appreciate the fascinating character of Holden Caulfield, much less anticipate the way my own life would unravel in these adolescent years. But now, three incredible years later, I’ve come to realize how much I value Holden’s presence in these unexpectedly difficult times. As I took a colt’s first steps into adulthood, trembling under the weight of my discoveries—the passions of love and despondency—Holden offered the comfort of a first friend. To me, Holden Caulfield is a fond memory. I’m aware that, frankly, his story is depressing and nihilistic. But maybe it’s presumptuous to brush Holden aside for his childish cynicism and Hamlet-esque romanticism, or see him as no more than a misanthropic, resentful teenager. For all of his meaningless flings with old acquaintances and scrap-by- scrap tearing apart of the human condition, I relate with Holden.
The connections were subtle; yet, discovering them was a transformative experience. To realize that somebody else feels the same uncertainty about society is liberating. Perhaps much of this insecurity stems from sensitivity, a weakness Holden and I share. In addition to that sensitivity, we both struggle with emotional intimacy. Though his outside shell remains aloof, Holden is especially prone to hurt feelings, however defensive these emotions become. And for me, when what seems trivial to others could move me to tears, I sense a lack of belonging.
But for all of the novel’s pervasive sadness, Holden’s interactions with his sister Phoebe are incredibly endearing. After Holden is kicked out of Pencey Prep and sneaks home, Phoebe’s surprised excitement at having her brother home quickly turns into disappointment when she realizes that he has, once again, flunked school. He tries to defend himself to his sister, who then says: “You don’t like anything that’s happening. You don’t like any schools. You don’t like a million things. You don’t.” And it depresses him—nobody else, really, could make Holden quietly accept any form of defeat. Yet when she challenges him to name one thing he likes, he mentions that he enjoys “right now,” sitting with her and just talking. She counters by saying that “it isn’t anything really,” but for him, it is.
Truly, the poignant beauty of “The Catcher in the Rye” owes to this unique sibling relationship. With Phoebe, Holden finally discovers the sort of love and emotional relief that is greater than any dissatisfaction with the world. In the novel’s ending, he finds happiness in the pouring rain, as he watches his sister go around on the carousel. With her, he has patience—something he’s willing to give to Phoebe, despite not receiving much from others. He understands that she cares for him as much as he idolizes her youthful simplicity. In many ways, she gives him purpose, though still abstract, to interrupt his aimless isolation. His love for her may have been rashly passionate—for, surely, the youthful spirit he so cherishes is as fleeting as any childhood—but more important is that Holden finds peace in this unsteady period of his life. He trusts himself to be vulnerable with another human being.
Reading this, I’m reminded of my brother. With him, I have a friendship I would not easily give up, just as Holden refuses to give up on Phoebe like he does with others.
And just as Holden is hurt by Phoebe’s dismayed reaction, I loathe to disappoint my brother because I genuinely respect and trust him. I treasure the time I spend with him—even if it’s as simple as an afternoon at the park swings—because “it is something really” to me. And I’ve come to realize how powerful it is to reach this level of emotional intimacy with people, or even just open my heart to things I love—the neighborhood park, Milan, San Francisco, the sea, cloudy weather, sunsets.
And perhaps, after “The Catcher in the Rye,” I’ve begun to love them even more.
Sincerely,
Karissa Dong