"My Son the Man" Chapter 8 Sound and Sense

The poem "My Son the Man" by Sharon Olds tells the story of a mother realizing her son is becoming a man. The poem starts with the speaker reliving her sons childhood. She begins to feel nostalgic as she remembers how she would, "zip him up and toss him up and catch his weight" (6-7). Throughout the poem, the speaker refers to Houdini's great escape. She sees the way her son begins to grow as the way Houdini would expand his body when trying to get himself out of the chains. She talks about a fear of men however, I was unable to decide what she meant by this. I can't understand where her fear of men would come from? Later on she gives an almost violent description of child birth and how it was "not what [she] had in mind when he pressed up through me like a/sealed trunk through the ice of the hudson" (9-11). By using the Houdini allusion, she compares growing up to a dangerous and voluntary act, and also an admirable one. She sees her son growing up as a learning experience because she says, “he looks at me the way Houdini studied a box to learn the way out” (14-15). While this mother is sad about her son growing up, I don’t think she feels any anger.  At the end of the poem it seems that some of her son’s feelings are revealed. She writes that he, “smiled and let himself be manacled” this shows that while her son may be ready to grow up, he will let himself stay with his mother for a little while longer. The smirk may seems michevious, but I think its just that he knows he’s doing something for his mother.