“Ted Stevens died in a plane crash last month. Oh yeah, and Daniel Schorr died too.” Ava said this to me casually as we sat by a duck pond on Saturday morning feeding the kids a snack of raisins, crackers, and blueberry muffin bits. “I thought you might want to know.”
This is how I get my news these days, in little tidbits that slip out during moments of idle conversation. It’s how I learned about the BP oil spill, the final passage of healthcare legislation, the earthquake in Haiti, and just about anything else that has happened outside the confines of our new neighborhood. I effectively live in an information bubble. Partially a matter of circumstance and partially of my own making, the bubble is a powerful filter that keeps me largely ignorant of just about everything going on in the world right now: politics, the economy, technological developments, trends in popular culture, you name it. I can tell you astonishingly little about any of these things.
And I love it.
The bubble started forming with Pip’s birth. The TV went into a cabinet. The computer went on a shelf. They only emerged for a few minutes each night after he went to sleep. Following Polly’s birth, the increased demands on my attention gradually weaned me from a regular consumption of NPR and sports talk radio as well. Now, aside from an ongoing subscription to the Atlantic Monthly, almost all my information of the outside world comes from Ava.
In place of the global array of news and stories that I used to get from various sources, I have the intensely local experience that is caring for Pip and Polly. They provide me with such a focused, first-hand array of comedy, drama, excitement, suspense, heartwarming moments, achievements, and thrills that the second and third-hand accounts of the world that come in through the news media, Facebook, movies, and the like all feel hazy and very far away. For example, in the last twenty-four hours, Pip completed a thirty-piece puzzle of the world practically on his own, asked me to talk about car wrecks over and over (this became a physics lesson), gave Polly an actual and unprompted kiss on the cheek for the first time, and melted down into tears on at least four different occasions. For her part, Polly added the words ‘cat,’ ‘yellow,’ and ‘purple’ to her vocabulary, happily gobbled so much macaroni and cheese that I thought she would burst, pooped in the toilet for the first time, and subsequently decided to celebrate by waking up at 11:45 last night and refusing to go back to sleep until 2 AM. There is nothing that I can read or watch that will ever match all of this.
In the last month, I have had an extra chance to ruminate on the bubble. I have made two trips up to Cincinnati to check in on our house, mow the yard, and do some basic maintenance, and each time I spent the entire 90 minute journey north listening to NPR. It was like briefly visiting a place I used to live in. So much was familiar and comfortable: the voices, the music, the regular sequence of the news segments. But, as has been the case anytime I have returned somewhere after a long absence, I noticed two things that I hadn’t felt before.
The first is that with all the reports and updates and commentary and analysis, it’s difficult to tell on a daily basis what is signal and what is noise. I used to think that I could filter through all the incoming material and figure out what mattered and what didn’t. Now, after my return visit, I don’t think that’s possible. So much of what is important in any given news narrative is determined post facto. The stories I heard on my way up to Cincinnati may be critical or may be worthless. For example, did the large drop in the Dow Jones Index signal a bad turn for the economy or did it just make more room for it to pop back up? The odds are with the latter, but it all depends on what happens the next day. There is no way of knowing beforehand. If I want narratives that are efficiently meaningful, I’m better off with history books. The daily (or hourly or minute-by-minute) news is just a giant crapshoot.
And that leads me to the second thing. When I turned off the radio upon arriving in Cincinnati, I felt somewhat informed but mostly just primed with anticipation about what will happen in the coming hours and days. I wanted to listen to more news on the way back to Lexington to see how things had changed during the two hours I was away from the radio. Then I wanted to check back in the next day. It was a compulsion that while not overwhelming was significant enough to make me think, “Was I addicted to the news?”
Usually upon hearing the word ‘addiction’ I think of things like alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, etc. But the withdrawal process I went through after each trip to Cincinnati had all the patterns of a person coming off an addiction. It makes me wonder. I’ve always thought of addiction as something abhorent and outside the bounds of normality. But if something as simple as listening to the news creates this kind of attachment in me, maybe I need to reconfigure my understanding. What if the propensity to addiction is a fundamental property of being human and the only real differentiating factor is the value placed on the things you are addicted to? If I substitute the word ‘addiction’ for ‘habit,’ how does that change my view of the world? I guess these are questions for another time.
In the meantime, I know that there is a balance to be struck between the world and my kids, a certain meeting point to be found between global and local knowledges that would make me a more socially functional person. But right now I am really happy with my bubble. The kids have less than five years before we release them into the wilds of the public school system. It’s a limited time opportunity. So, I’ll take some global ignorance in exchange for a little extra sensitivity to the local details. There’ll be plenty of time to catch up on all that other news later.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
On the Playground
I had trouble getting my head around things this week, so here’s a story from just before we moved out of Cincinnati.
Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.
- From the movie Finding Nemo
I took Pip and Polly to a playground a couple of weeks ago. The one we went to is in a great spot, set up on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River on one side and the local general aviation airport (i.e. private and corporate planes) on the other. The playground itself is set back off the bluff about fifty yards in a pocket underneath some large oak trees. It’s a nice playground because it’s not that big and all those trees create plenty of shade on a hot day. As an added bonus, the park is a bit tricky to get to, so it tends to be less busy than some of the others nearby.
We met some friends up there for a playdate. The kids are the same age as Pip and Polly and, they all enjoy following each other up, down, and around the playground equipment. Slides are a particular favorite for Pip. He can do the slide route over and over and over until he finally wears a hole right through his shorts.
This day it had rained the night before, and we were trying to determine the best way to dry the slide so that Pip et al could get rolling. I went back to my backpack to see if I had left any hand towels in there from a previous playground trip when I noticed the appearance in quick succession of about eight to ten SUVs and minivans. Within five minutes we were engulfed in a wave of children spewing forth from what seemed like every direction. Some preschool had decided to do a summertime ‘meet-and-greet’ at the park that morning and every parent there had brought multiple children with them. Suddenly there were kids all over the place, flooding the playground equipment and running around with the frenetic energy of ants after someone kicks over an anthill.
Pip was not pleased with this development at all. He likes focused play that is generally free of interruptions or distractions. He does not like a chaotic environment unless he is the one creating it. Whenever there is a lot going on around him, his inclination is to back out of the way, to seek out a spot of relative calm from which he can take a measure of things. In the past this spot has often been right between my knees. If things felt crazy, he would just swing in between my legs and hang out there until he found a zone of comfort or a satisfactory way to venture out beyond my shadow.
This day, that option was not available. The week before Polly had taken the training wheels off and started walking on her own. Up to that point I had always carried her around a playground in our backpack while Pip played. But now that she was walking on her own, it was time for her to get into the playground action as well. Unlike Pip, Polly does not mind crowds. She just dives in and goes about her business as if there was no one there at all. This day her business was attempting to climb up anything she could get two hands on. This forced me to follow her around very closely so that I could help her navigate the various steps and ladders while also keeping her from turning the wrong direction and falling on her head from a couple of feet up.
My unavailability left Pip confused. One second he wanted me to stay with him and the next second he was asking me where Polly was going. With all the chaos and the constant challenge of keeping track of Polly, Pip’s whole understanding of what a playground morning was supposed to be was upended. This new world as it was left him jumpy, uncertain, and slightly manic.
And then came a moment I had long dreaded while never fully appreciating how complicated it was going to be.
One of the pieces of playground equipment on this playground is a little single person spinner. It consists of a small circular platform set about a foot above the ground with a vertical pole coming up through the middle. The whole apparatus is mounted on a rotating joint that allows it to spin freely. During a moment of calm, Pip sat down on this platform to take a drink of water. I bent down to get Polly something out of my backpack about ten feet away. While rummaging around in there, I heard the voice of an annoyed little girl say “Get up.” I looked up to see this four-year-old girl standing over Pip with her hands on her hips. “Get up” she demanded once again. Pip looked over to me in confusion. This is not how we interact at home nor is it how we have taught Pip to interact with other kids. So, he was looking for me to intervene, for me to politely tell this little brat to wait her turn. He had no idea how else to respond to the aggressive entitlement of this little girl. But I couldn’t. This wasn’t my child, and the only words in my mind at that moment were not suitable to be used with children. As such, I was frozen in place as Pip stumbled up from the platform mumbling pitifully “I wasn’t done with my turn…” As soon as he slunk away, the little girl promptly sat down on the spinner looking slightly disappointed that Pip didn’t put up more of a fight.
The whole experience left me feeling pretty shaken. On the drive home I replayed everything a couple of times in my mind, and I realized two things:
First, I can’t always protect the kids from that kind of indignity. The world has its ugly moments. They are unavoidable, and my kids will have to figure out how to deal with them. I had known this logically but until that moment I had not known it experientially. There is no teacher like experience.
Second, I have not done a good job preparing the kids to handle such moments. It’s something of a double bind because the experience that they need to learn to handle is the very experience from which I am trying to shield them. There’s no reason to knowingly subject kids to barbarity, however small, just to ‘toughen them up’. But I do need to give them some tools to try out when such a situation arises again. Pip had no possible strategies to draw upon except walking away from things and, while that is an effective strategy in many instances, in this case it felt like a huge failure. He should have had an opportunity to defend himself and his place on that spinner.
Later that afternoon, Pip and I talked about the incident with the spinner and what he might do in future situations like that one. I told him that it was okay to say no to that little girl and then politely tell her to wait her turn. I’m not sure that he really understood what I was trying to tell him. The real lesson of the day – that Daddy can’t always intervene to create fairness in the world - was still too present in his mind. But I didn’t know what else to do. I guess the best I can hope for is that he’ll remember that the next time something like this happens to him.
Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.
- From the movie Finding Nemo
I took Pip and Polly to a playground a couple of weeks ago. The one we went to is in a great spot, set up on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River on one side and the local general aviation airport (i.e. private and corporate planes) on the other. The playground itself is set back off the bluff about fifty yards in a pocket underneath some large oak trees. It’s a nice playground because it’s not that big and all those trees create plenty of shade on a hot day. As an added bonus, the park is a bit tricky to get to, so it tends to be less busy than some of the others nearby.
We met some friends up there for a playdate. The kids are the same age as Pip and Polly and, they all enjoy following each other up, down, and around the playground equipment. Slides are a particular favorite for Pip. He can do the slide route over and over and over until he finally wears a hole right through his shorts.
This day it had rained the night before, and we were trying to determine the best way to dry the slide so that Pip et al could get rolling. I went back to my backpack to see if I had left any hand towels in there from a previous playground trip when I noticed the appearance in quick succession of about eight to ten SUVs and minivans. Within five minutes we were engulfed in a wave of children spewing forth from what seemed like every direction. Some preschool had decided to do a summertime ‘meet-and-greet’ at the park that morning and every parent there had brought multiple children with them. Suddenly there were kids all over the place, flooding the playground equipment and running around with the frenetic energy of ants after someone kicks over an anthill.
Pip was not pleased with this development at all. He likes focused play that is generally free of interruptions or distractions. He does not like a chaotic environment unless he is the one creating it. Whenever there is a lot going on around him, his inclination is to back out of the way, to seek out a spot of relative calm from which he can take a measure of things. In the past this spot has often been right between my knees. If things felt crazy, he would just swing in between my legs and hang out there until he found a zone of comfort or a satisfactory way to venture out beyond my shadow.
This day, that option was not available. The week before Polly had taken the training wheels off and started walking on her own. Up to that point I had always carried her around a playground in our backpack while Pip played. But now that she was walking on her own, it was time for her to get into the playground action as well. Unlike Pip, Polly does not mind crowds. She just dives in and goes about her business as if there was no one there at all. This day her business was attempting to climb up anything she could get two hands on. This forced me to follow her around very closely so that I could help her navigate the various steps and ladders while also keeping her from turning the wrong direction and falling on her head from a couple of feet up.
My unavailability left Pip confused. One second he wanted me to stay with him and the next second he was asking me where Polly was going. With all the chaos and the constant challenge of keeping track of Polly, Pip’s whole understanding of what a playground morning was supposed to be was upended. This new world as it was left him jumpy, uncertain, and slightly manic.
And then came a moment I had long dreaded while never fully appreciating how complicated it was going to be.
One of the pieces of playground equipment on this playground is a little single person spinner. It consists of a small circular platform set about a foot above the ground with a vertical pole coming up through the middle. The whole apparatus is mounted on a rotating joint that allows it to spin freely. During a moment of calm, Pip sat down on this platform to take a drink of water. I bent down to get Polly something out of my backpack about ten feet away. While rummaging around in there, I heard the voice of an annoyed little girl say “Get up.” I looked up to see this four-year-old girl standing over Pip with her hands on her hips. “Get up” she demanded once again. Pip looked over to me in confusion. This is not how we interact at home nor is it how we have taught Pip to interact with other kids. So, he was looking for me to intervene, for me to politely tell this little brat to wait her turn. He had no idea how else to respond to the aggressive entitlement of this little girl. But I couldn’t. This wasn’t my child, and the only words in my mind at that moment were not suitable to be used with children. As such, I was frozen in place as Pip stumbled up from the platform mumbling pitifully “I wasn’t done with my turn…” As soon as he slunk away, the little girl promptly sat down on the spinner looking slightly disappointed that Pip didn’t put up more of a fight.
The whole experience left me feeling pretty shaken. On the drive home I replayed everything a couple of times in my mind, and I realized two things:
First, I can’t always protect the kids from that kind of indignity. The world has its ugly moments. They are unavoidable, and my kids will have to figure out how to deal with them. I had known this logically but until that moment I had not known it experientially. There is no teacher like experience.
Second, I have not done a good job preparing the kids to handle such moments. It’s something of a double bind because the experience that they need to learn to handle is the very experience from which I am trying to shield them. There’s no reason to knowingly subject kids to barbarity, however small, just to ‘toughen them up’. But I do need to give them some tools to try out when such a situation arises again. Pip had no possible strategies to draw upon except walking away from things and, while that is an effective strategy in many instances, in this case it felt like a huge failure. He should have had an opportunity to defend himself and his place on that spinner.
Later that afternoon, Pip and I talked about the incident with the spinner and what he might do in future situations like that one. I told him that it was okay to say no to that little girl and then politely tell her to wait her turn. I’m not sure that he really understood what I was trying to tell him. The real lesson of the day – that Daddy can’t always intervene to create fairness in the world - was still too present in his mind. But I didn’t know what else to do. I guess the best I can hope for is that he’ll remember that the next time something like this happens to him.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Adventures with Children and Boats
Ava and I are both first children. We got the first crack at most things and didn’t have to bid our time until we were big enough to do something our siblings were doing. The significance of this experience wasn’t fully appreciated by either of us until the arrival of Polly, our second child. Now, each day we get a reminder of how influential that birth order is…
My parents live in a house on a lake. As such, they have the requisite dock and a pair of vehicles for moving around on the water – in their case a jetski and a 21 foot cruiser. The boat used to spend its weekends pulling around skiers and crazy teenagers on inner tubes. Now, it mostly leaves its cradle for a nice sunset cruise or to ferry people from one place to another.
How the kids would handle the boat had been an item of discussion between Ava and I prior to our trip to my parents’ house. The last time we had visited them Polly had not yet been conceived and Pip had been too young to go out on the boat. So this would be their first opportunity to take a ride and we could only guess how they would react to it. With the noise of the engine and the force of a twenty mile an hour wind hitting you in the face, a ride on the boat hits a lot of senses pretty hard. I felt like Pip would be okay, but was not sure that Polly would understand enough to be able to enjoy it.
The first full day of our visit with my parents brought us the opportunity to find out. We decided to visit some of my parents’ friends on the lake and make use of a small, shaded beach these friends had created on their property. The quickest, easiest, and cleanest way to get there and back was by boat. Pip had gotten the chance to go out on the boat for a short while the evening before and, after a warming up period, had found that he liked it. As Polly did not get this kind of test run, we debated some over whether to drive Polly over by car. Ultimately, we decided to let her give the boat a try. It turned out to be a somewhat rough experience.
To start with she did not like her lifejacket. It was a black and yellow infant model designed to keep a young child’s head upright should they accidentally fall into the water. This made it extra bulky, particularly around the neck. When Ava first attempted to put it on Polly, Polly made her displeasure well known. After a few minutes however, Polly settled down enough for us to continue on with the experiment. She waddled down to the dock looking uncomfortable, top-heavy, and quite suspicious about what was to come next. We hoisted her into the cabin area of the boat and set her up on my lap so that the windshield could block much of the wind. As we slowly pulled out from the dock her little chocolate eyes flipped back and forth between Ava and I letting both of us know that this was not her idea of a good time. When my dad ran the boat up on to plane, Polly went to a special place. She let her legs and arms go limp. Her face held no expression. Her only movement was to periodically squint when I inadvertently let too much sun hit her face. It was as if I was holding an inanimate doll on my lap.
Once we got to our destination and got off the boat, Polly came back to life. At the beach she happily got out of her life jacket and set off to play in the sand. She spent a good hour digging holes with a stick and splashing in the first few inches of water at the edge of the lake. But when it was time to go, she went through the same process again. She fussed while we put on her life jacket and then went to her special place while the boat was in motion. I guess that’s what she needed to do to make it through the ride.
A couple of days later my parents wanted to take Pip by boat to see one of the lake’s long-standing institutions. One of the marinas has over time built up a herd of a large catfish like fish called carp. On the back side of the dock where this marina has its gas pumps is a eight by ten foot area where people have for at least thirty years fed popcorn to these fish as a way to pass the time. The herd now is a couple hundred in number and when you throw a handful of popcorn to them the fish start jumping and splashing all over the place in their efforts to suck up every last floating kernel. Its quite a sight, and my parents rightfully thought Pip would get a kick out of it.
We talked about whether to bring Polly as well but given her discomfort with her first boat ride, I decided to keep her back at the house. While Pip and my parents went out, I would give her a bath and spend some one-on-one play time with her.
So, when the kids woke up from their nap that afternoon, my parents told Pip what we had planned. He was very excited and ran over to where the life jackets were kept. Polly was sitting on my lap at the time. When she saw Pip coming back to us with his life jacket in his hand, she quickly got up and, without making a sound, toddled over to the life jackets, picked hers up, and brought it back over. She stood directly in front of me and dropped the jacket into my lap. My parents barely held off a peal of laughter, but Polly was determinedly matter of fact about things. The look on her face said, “He’s not going anywhere without me.”
For a moment I considered trying to dissuade her but quickly realized how foolish that effort would be. So, we got both kids suited up. Polly grimly allowed us to once again buckle up the jacket around her neck and once again she went to her special place until the ride was over.
Both kids enjoyed the carp immensely. Pip threw popcorn, and Polly watched intently as the bodies and tails of the fish flopped around the surface of the water. My mom got some great pictures. But there was one picture she did not get that I wish she had. It was of Polly walking back up from the dock after we had returned home. Bobbling along the sidewalk with her life jacket still in place, there was a look of accomplishment on her face and almost a swagger to her movements. I could easily imagine her saying “I am the second child, and I will not be left behind.”
My parents live in a house on a lake. As such, they have the requisite dock and a pair of vehicles for moving around on the water – in their case a jetski and a 21 foot cruiser. The boat used to spend its weekends pulling around skiers and crazy teenagers on inner tubes. Now, it mostly leaves its cradle for a nice sunset cruise or to ferry people from one place to another.
How the kids would handle the boat had been an item of discussion between Ava and I prior to our trip to my parents’ house. The last time we had visited them Polly had not yet been conceived and Pip had been too young to go out on the boat. So this would be their first opportunity to take a ride and we could only guess how they would react to it. With the noise of the engine and the force of a twenty mile an hour wind hitting you in the face, a ride on the boat hits a lot of senses pretty hard. I felt like Pip would be okay, but was not sure that Polly would understand enough to be able to enjoy it.
The first full day of our visit with my parents brought us the opportunity to find out. We decided to visit some of my parents’ friends on the lake and make use of a small, shaded beach these friends had created on their property. The quickest, easiest, and cleanest way to get there and back was by boat. Pip had gotten the chance to go out on the boat for a short while the evening before and, after a warming up period, had found that he liked it. As Polly did not get this kind of test run, we debated some over whether to drive Polly over by car. Ultimately, we decided to let her give the boat a try. It turned out to be a somewhat rough experience.
To start with she did not like her lifejacket. It was a black and yellow infant model designed to keep a young child’s head upright should they accidentally fall into the water. This made it extra bulky, particularly around the neck. When Ava first attempted to put it on Polly, Polly made her displeasure well known. After a few minutes however, Polly settled down enough for us to continue on with the experiment. She waddled down to the dock looking uncomfortable, top-heavy, and quite suspicious about what was to come next. We hoisted her into the cabin area of the boat and set her up on my lap so that the windshield could block much of the wind. As we slowly pulled out from the dock her little chocolate eyes flipped back and forth between Ava and I letting both of us know that this was not her idea of a good time. When my dad ran the boat up on to plane, Polly went to a special place. She let her legs and arms go limp. Her face held no expression. Her only movement was to periodically squint when I inadvertently let too much sun hit her face. It was as if I was holding an inanimate doll on my lap.
Once we got to our destination and got off the boat, Polly came back to life. At the beach she happily got out of her life jacket and set off to play in the sand. She spent a good hour digging holes with a stick and splashing in the first few inches of water at the edge of the lake. But when it was time to go, she went through the same process again. She fussed while we put on her life jacket and then went to her special place while the boat was in motion. I guess that’s what she needed to do to make it through the ride.
A couple of days later my parents wanted to take Pip by boat to see one of the lake’s long-standing institutions. One of the marinas has over time built up a herd of a large catfish like fish called carp. On the back side of the dock where this marina has its gas pumps is a eight by ten foot area where people have for at least thirty years fed popcorn to these fish as a way to pass the time. The herd now is a couple hundred in number and when you throw a handful of popcorn to them the fish start jumping and splashing all over the place in their efforts to suck up every last floating kernel. Its quite a sight, and my parents rightfully thought Pip would get a kick out of it.
We talked about whether to bring Polly as well but given her discomfort with her first boat ride, I decided to keep her back at the house. While Pip and my parents went out, I would give her a bath and spend some one-on-one play time with her.
So, when the kids woke up from their nap that afternoon, my parents told Pip what we had planned. He was very excited and ran over to where the life jackets were kept. Polly was sitting on my lap at the time. When she saw Pip coming back to us with his life jacket in his hand, she quickly got up and, without making a sound, toddled over to the life jackets, picked hers up, and brought it back over. She stood directly in front of me and dropped the jacket into my lap. My parents barely held off a peal of laughter, but Polly was determinedly matter of fact about things. The look on her face said, “He’s not going anywhere without me.”
For a moment I considered trying to dissuade her but quickly realized how foolish that effort would be. So, we got both kids suited up. Polly grimly allowed us to once again buckle up the jacket around her neck and once again she went to her special place until the ride was over.
Both kids enjoyed the carp immensely. Pip threw popcorn, and Polly watched intently as the bodies and tails of the fish flopped around the surface of the water. My mom got some great pictures. But there was one picture she did not get that I wish she had. It was of Polly walking back up from the dock after we had returned home. Bobbling along the sidewalk with her life jacket still in place, there was a look of accomplishment on her face and almost a swagger to her movements. I could easily imagine her saying “I am the second child, and I will not be left behind.”
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Guilt
I read a post in the Daddy Dialectic blog the other day about gender equality at home and it got me thinking...
As I've mentioned before, our family is moving. Ava recently got a new job, and, as such, we are extracting our lives from Cincinnati and transferring them to Lexington, KY. However, before Ava got the new job, she had applied to and been accepted for a research methods training course that would take place at the end of July. To manage the kids in her absence, we had decided back in April to take them to my parent's house for the week of Ava’s training. That way, I would get some help with the kids and my parents would get some extended face time with their grandchildren. So when Ava got the new job, we had a decision to make. Do we cancel the training and the trip in order to handle the details of moving or do we just tack another event on to the previously scheduled ones?
We weren't thrilled with the first option - we knew that the training was going to be a good one, and I didn't relish the idea of disappointing my parents. So, making the second option work became our focus. After a while of discussing how to fit both the trip and the move into the month of July, we realized that this arrangement presented us with an opportunity. We were worried about what to do with the kids while the movers were in the house. Pip likes to be involved in any house related activities and keeping him out from under the feet of the movers without upsetting him was going to be a challenge. The obvious solution to this was right there in front of us: schedule the move for right after Ava's training and keep the kids at my parents for an extra couple of days. The kids were going to be there anyway and by keeping them with my parents for a bit longer, Ava and I wouldn't have to bounce them from house to hotel to new apartment on the day of the move.
And yet, Ava and I were uneasy about the idea of doing all of this at once. The week away was already going to be a big undertaking. Adding the move was going to draw very heavily on our physical and psychic resources. Plus, Ava and I both felt a certain amount of guilt about our assigned roles. Ava felt guilty for leaving me to manage the children without her for so long. I felt guilty that Ava would have to drive twelve hours from the site of the training in order to meet the movers and chaperone all our stuff down to Lexington.
We eventually put the guilt aside. Keeping the kids with my parents for the extra days was the best available plan and, in practice, it worked out very well. But all our uneasiness did get me thinking about where that guilt came from and what it means for us.
My first thought was that our guilt emerged from the reversal of industrial-era gender roles existing within the plan – i.e. more often the wife/mother would take the kids to her parents while the father would do the moving work. In this theory, our guilt would be a result of our blatant violation of an established cultural inheritance. This kind of violation, even when I know it’s insignificant, still makes me feel strange. For example, having Ava mow the yard seems odd to me. That’s my job. More importantly, it’s my job because my dad mowed our yard and his dad mowed their yard. It’s just what I am supposed to do.
However, this theory would also lead us to expect that neither Ava nor I would experience any guilt about the plan if our roles were reversed. I don’t think this is true. If Ava took the kids to her parents and I handled the move, we would both still feel guilty about not being able to help the other with their task.
Which leads me to another consideration…
In our family we have established a certain expectation that most household tasks are shared. At various times, Ava and I both take the lead in doing laundry, cooking food, cleaning bathrooms, or bathing the kids. While we certainly have our own tasks, the lines that divide one person’s responsibilities from the other’s are much less distinct than they were in my parents’ household. I get the sense that this increased scrambling of household tasks is true for many families now. In many of the families that I know, each parent ends up doing a little bit of everything and in the process the traditional domestic roles of husband and wife, father and mother become pretty hazy.
Now our moving plan ran completely counter to this sharing framework of organization. Instead of spreading out each job across us, it demanded that we undertake our tasks wholly and completely for a number of days without the ability of the other to assist in any physical way. It was in essence an old school division of labor that took advantage of our individual skills and played to our specialized foundations of knowledge. By the standards of basic economic theory, it was rational and it was efficient. Each of us did what we could do in order to accomplish the larger goal of moving our family from one place to another. As such, one could argue, it was a plan based in the idea that equality can be found in diversity. It was just not the kind of equality we were used to.
As I've mentioned before, our family is moving. Ava recently got a new job, and, as such, we are extracting our lives from Cincinnati and transferring them to Lexington, KY. However, before Ava got the new job, she had applied to and been accepted for a research methods training course that would take place at the end of July. To manage the kids in her absence, we had decided back in April to take them to my parent's house for the week of Ava’s training. That way, I would get some help with the kids and my parents would get some extended face time with their grandchildren. So when Ava got the new job, we had a decision to make. Do we cancel the training and the trip in order to handle the details of moving or do we just tack another event on to the previously scheduled ones?
We weren't thrilled with the first option - we knew that the training was going to be a good one, and I didn't relish the idea of disappointing my parents. So, making the second option work became our focus. After a while of discussing how to fit both the trip and the move into the month of July, we realized that this arrangement presented us with an opportunity. We were worried about what to do with the kids while the movers were in the house. Pip likes to be involved in any house related activities and keeping him out from under the feet of the movers without upsetting him was going to be a challenge. The obvious solution to this was right there in front of us: schedule the move for right after Ava's training and keep the kids at my parents for an extra couple of days. The kids were going to be there anyway and by keeping them with my parents for a bit longer, Ava and I wouldn't have to bounce them from house to hotel to new apartment on the day of the move.
And yet, Ava and I were uneasy about the idea of doing all of this at once. The week away was already going to be a big undertaking. Adding the move was going to draw very heavily on our physical and psychic resources. Plus, Ava and I both felt a certain amount of guilt about our assigned roles. Ava felt guilty for leaving me to manage the children without her for so long. I felt guilty that Ava would have to drive twelve hours from the site of the training in order to meet the movers and chaperone all our stuff down to Lexington.
We eventually put the guilt aside. Keeping the kids with my parents for the extra days was the best available plan and, in practice, it worked out very well. But all our uneasiness did get me thinking about where that guilt came from and what it means for us.
My first thought was that our guilt emerged from the reversal of industrial-era gender roles existing within the plan – i.e. more often the wife/mother would take the kids to her parents while the father would do the moving work. In this theory, our guilt would be a result of our blatant violation of an established cultural inheritance. This kind of violation, even when I know it’s insignificant, still makes me feel strange. For example, having Ava mow the yard seems odd to me. That’s my job. More importantly, it’s my job because my dad mowed our yard and his dad mowed their yard. It’s just what I am supposed to do.
However, this theory would also lead us to expect that neither Ava nor I would experience any guilt about the plan if our roles were reversed. I don’t think this is true. If Ava took the kids to her parents and I handled the move, we would both still feel guilty about not being able to help the other with their task.
Which leads me to another consideration…
In our family we have established a certain expectation that most household tasks are shared. At various times, Ava and I both take the lead in doing laundry, cooking food, cleaning bathrooms, or bathing the kids. While we certainly have our own tasks, the lines that divide one person’s responsibilities from the other’s are much less distinct than they were in my parents’ household. I get the sense that this increased scrambling of household tasks is true for many families now. In many of the families that I know, each parent ends up doing a little bit of everything and in the process the traditional domestic roles of husband and wife, father and mother become pretty hazy.
Now our moving plan ran completely counter to this sharing framework of organization. Instead of spreading out each job across us, it demanded that we undertake our tasks wholly and completely for a number of days without the ability of the other to assist in any physical way. It was in essence an old school division of labor that took advantage of our individual skills and played to our specialized foundations of knowledge. By the standards of basic economic theory, it was rational and it was efficient. Each of us did what we could do in order to accomplish the larger goal of moving our family from one place to another. As such, one could argue, it was a plan based in the idea that equality can be found in diversity. It was just not the kind of equality we were used to.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Bedtime renewal
So often it’s big things that make me frustrated and little things that remind me how great it is to be a dad. Here’s one of the latter that I didn’t want to let slip past.
Pip has been taking swim lessons for about six months now. Last fall we started going to a ‘water babies’ session at the local YMCA where kids and parents putter around a pool and get the kids used to the idea of being in a giant tub of water. Pip liked it a lot so when he turned three in January, we signed him up for the full scale, learning to swim version. He’s been going every week since. Last month, the swim instructor invited me to come into the pool with the class under the rationale that if I was there and wanted to help with my kid, he was happy to have the extra set of hands. This has worked out great for us. Pip gets to splash and frolic with daddy and I get to swim a little bit each week. As such Tuesday afternoons have become one of the most highly anticipated and ultimately enjoyable blocks of our week.
Unfortunately, there was one week that did not live up to our expectations. About a month ago we had one of those days when things just did not go the way we wanted them to. First of all, the instructor bailed on us by making the entire hour a ‘free play hour’ instead of going through the set exercises like we usually do. The other kids loved this, but Pip is not immediately comfortable in chaos that is not of his own creation. He prefers to have a certain order around him or at the very least a space separate from the jumping and splashing and shouting of the others. Secondly, the instructor also moved all of us to the facility’s outside pool for our hour of play. This would have been fine if the weather was hot and sunny. However, we had enjoyed some beautifully cool weather over the previous few days and the pool temperature as a result was chilly at best. To compound this, a thin veil of clouds kept the sun out of view for much of the afternoon and a slight breeze frequently blew across the pool area. Thus, we had cool water, cooler air, and a whole mess of kids splashing, jumping, and getting in the way. Not a good recipe for us.
Pip tried to make the most of it. He gamely waded into the shallow end to practice putting his face in the water. Then, he did a couple of doggie-paddle laps before deciding that he would like to do some jumping in instead. I was in the water the whole time bouncing up and down trying to keep warm. After about twenty-five minutes, the chill finally won out and with blue lips and shivering legs we headed into the locker room to take a hot shower.
We came home that evening in a mildly somber and distracted mood which Ava managed to keep from getting worse. She got Pip through dinner by telling him stories about when he was born. There is nothing fancy or outlandish about these stories but an extended version of the basic who, what, and when was enough to distract him for the time necessary to consume most of his food. In this way, we made it through dinner and on to the bedtime routine without any major breakdowns.
Our bedtime routine has evolved over time into a series of shifts and handoffs between Ava and I that finally ends with Pip, Polly and I all together in Pip’s room. Once Ava leaves the room, Pip hangs out on his bed while I walk Polly – happily strapped in a baby carrier - back and forth until she falls asleep. Once Polly has fully crashed, I take her into her room and put her into her crib. Then, I go back and lay down with Pip until he falls asleep, too. The whole process runs about 45 minutes to an hour.
Usually Pip comes with me to put Polly in her crib. He likes to come into her room, turn on the baby monitor, and roll around on the floor while I perform the steps necessary to carefully remove Polly from the baby carrier and get her down into the crib. Oftentimes, Pip will make some kind of low-level noise during this process like kicking his feet on the floor or whispering questions to me or scraping himself back and forth along the edge of the rug. I’m always worried he’s going to wake Polly up with this fidgeting. Usually it’s a silly concern because Polly is out and can’t be roused with a 20 piece brass band. But every once in a while she doesn’t play by the established rules. For some reason, she hears or feels something that catches her interest and she decides to open her eyes and take a look around. Then we have to start the bedtime choreography all over again and its 10 PM before everyone is finally asleep. I never know exactly when such a night is coming so Pip’s noise making constantly worries me.
This particular night Pip added an extra hurdle to getting Polly down on the first try. As we were heading out of his room and into Polly’s, he informed me that he needed to pee. When he said this I thought he was just going to go straight to the bathroom but instead he followed me into Polly’s room and went to turn on the monitor as usual. Then, as I was beginning the delicate process of shifting Polly’s head around to unclip first the left carrier strap and then the right, Pip headed for the door. He passed through the doorway, grabbing the doorknob and pulling the door quickly behind him. As he did so, I tensed up involuntarily in anticipation of the door slamming against the jamb. I could hear the noise coming. I could see Polly’s eyes popping open. I could feel my spirits deflating that much further after the disappointment of the afternoon. All this passed through me as the door swung to meet the frame.
Then, Pip, without apparent thought or effort, caught the door with his hand and skillfully eased it to a stop with about half an inch to spare. No bang. No click. Just the sound of little feet padding down the hallway into the bathroom. It’s a move I’ve done a hundred times but one that I never considered Pip to be aware of, much less capable of executing. And he did it so naturally and with such nonchalant fluidity that I wonder if he was even conscious of what he was doing in the moment itself. All I know for sure is that after putting Polly down, I walked into the bathroom to find Pip sitting on the toilet, dinosaur pajama pants around his ankles and a big smile on his face. He was so proud of himself that I couldn’t help but smile too.
Pip has been taking swim lessons for about six months now. Last fall we started going to a ‘water babies’ session at the local YMCA where kids and parents putter around a pool and get the kids used to the idea of being in a giant tub of water. Pip liked it a lot so when he turned three in January, we signed him up for the full scale, learning to swim version. He’s been going every week since. Last month, the swim instructor invited me to come into the pool with the class under the rationale that if I was there and wanted to help with my kid, he was happy to have the extra set of hands. This has worked out great for us. Pip gets to splash and frolic with daddy and I get to swim a little bit each week. As such Tuesday afternoons have become one of the most highly anticipated and ultimately enjoyable blocks of our week.
Unfortunately, there was one week that did not live up to our expectations. About a month ago we had one of those days when things just did not go the way we wanted them to. First of all, the instructor bailed on us by making the entire hour a ‘free play hour’ instead of going through the set exercises like we usually do. The other kids loved this, but Pip is not immediately comfortable in chaos that is not of his own creation. He prefers to have a certain order around him or at the very least a space separate from the jumping and splashing and shouting of the others. Secondly, the instructor also moved all of us to the facility’s outside pool for our hour of play. This would have been fine if the weather was hot and sunny. However, we had enjoyed some beautifully cool weather over the previous few days and the pool temperature as a result was chilly at best. To compound this, a thin veil of clouds kept the sun out of view for much of the afternoon and a slight breeze frequently blew across the pool area. Thus, we had cool water, cooler air, and a whole mess of kids splashing, jumping, and getting in the way. Not a good recipe for us.
Pip tried to make the most of it. He gamely waded into the shallow end to practice putting his face in the water. Then, he did a couple of doggie-paddle laps before deciding that he would like to do some jumping in instead. I was in the water the whole time bouncing up and down trying to keep warm. After about twenty-five minutes, the chill finally won out and with blue lips and shivering legs we headed into the locker room to take a hot shower.
We came home that evening in a mildly somber and distracted mood which Ava managed to keep from getting worse. She got Pip through dinner by telling him stories about when he was born. There is nothing fancy or outlandish about these stories but an extended version of the basic who, what, and when was enough to distract him for the time necessary to consume most of his food. In this way, we made it through dinner and on to the bedtime routine without any major breakdowns.
Our bedtime routine has evolved over time into a series of shifts and handoffs between Ava and I that finally ends with Pip, Polly and I all together in Pip’s room. Once Ava leaves the room, Pip hangs out on his bed while I walk Polly – happily strapped in a baby carrier - back and forth until she falls asleep. Once Polly has fully crashed, I take her into her room and put her into her crib. Then, I go back and lay down with Pip until he falls asleep, too. The whole process runs about 45 minutes to an hour.
Usually Pip comes with me to put Polly in her crib. He likes to come into her room, turn on the baby monitor, and roll around on the floor while I perform the steps necessary to carefully remove Polly from the baby carrier and get her down into the crib. Oftentimes, Pip will make some kind of low-level noise during this process like kicking his feet on the floor or whispering questions to me or scraping himself back and forth along the edge of the rug. I’m always worried he’s going to wake Polly up with this fidgeting. Usually it’s a silly concern because Polly is out and can’t be roused with a 20 piece brass band. But every once in a while she doesn’t play by the established rules. For some reason, she hears or feels something that catches her interest and she decides to open her eyes and take a look around. Then we have to start the bedtime choreography all over again and its 10 PM before everyone is finally asleep. I never know exactly when such a night is coming so Pip’s noise making constantly worries me.
This particular night Pip added an extra hurdle to getting Polly down on the first try. As we were heading out of his room and into Polly’s, he informed me that he needed to pee. When he said this I thought he was just going to go straight to the bathroom but instead he followed me into Polly’s room and went to turn on the monitor as usual. Then, as I was beginning the delicate process of shifting Polly’s head around to unclip first the left carrier strap and then the right, Pip headed for the door. He passed through the doorway, grabbing the doorknob and pulling the door quickly behind him. As he did so, I tensed up involuntarily in anticipation of the door slamming against the jamb. I could hear the noise coming. I could see Polly’s eyes popping open. I could feel my spirits deflating that much further after the disappointment of the afternoon. All this passed through me as the door swung to meet the frame.
Then, Pip, without apparent thought or effort, caught the door with his hand and skillfully eased it to a stop with about half an inch to spare. No bang. No click. Just the sound of little feet padding down the hallway into the bathroom. It’s a move I’ve done a hundred times but one that I never considered Pip to be aware of, much less capable of executing. And he did it so naturally and with such nonchalant fluidity that I wonder if he was even conscious of what he was doing in the moment itself. All I know for sure is that after putting Polly down, I walked into the bathroom to find Pip sitting on the toilet, dinosaur pajama pants around his ankles and a big smile on his face. He was so proud of himself that I couldn’t help but smile too.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Taming the Wildebeest
We are in the process of selling our house and, given the nature of the current housing market, it is a real struggle. So, we are doing everything we can to get that one magic person to walk through our door. This is includes doing open houses on as many Sunday afternoons as possible.
Early on we decided that the best way for our family to deal with an open house day was to set things up the night before and then get out of Dodge after breakfast the next morning. That way we don’t spend the entire morning trying to corral Pip’s and Polly’s natural inclinations towards chaos or fretting about what other little things Ava and I might do to make the house look just a touch nicer. To accomplish this, we have taken to going on day trips.
The past two open house days we have ventured out to a state park that is about an hour from our house. The state park has a small lake, a nice wooden, A-frame lodge, a few hiking trails, and a nature center with some rehabing raptors and a live mountain lion. We take a picnic lunch with us and go play in a creek that runs along the side of one of the hiking trails. It’s a wonderfully peaceful spot. The creek runs down between two hills and is just deep enough to cover your ankles. The running water and the shade of the summer foliage overhead keeps things cool even when the temps are breaking the 90 degree barrier. And the kids love having the freedom to play. They throw rocks in the water, traipse up and down through the shallow areas, float sticks through the mini-rapids, and look under rocks for crawdads. Throw in a few nostalgic memories of creek-walking from my own childhood and the general absence of other people and this excursion has become one of my favorite things to do as a family.
All that fun does take its toll, however, and when we get back to the house in the afternoon, everyone is exhausted. Now, this type of exhaustion can be really nice if you have the chance to languish in it - maybe have a beer or some ice cream, then put your feet up and watch the sun set. Unfortunately, the kids are not ready for that kind of recovery process yet. They are more in the coax-some-food-into-me-then-put-me-in-the-bath kind of stage. This is a fine process, too, though much less relaxing for Ava and me than the beer and sunset version.
So, two weekends ago, we had an open house, we went out for the day to the state park, and we returned home tired. We dragged the kids into the house, and they set about acting out in their established ways. For Pip this means that he becomes whiny. He wants this, he wants that. If something isn’t exactly right, tears will follow. Polly, in contrast, becomes mischievous. She’ll push the limits on things, letting her impulses to bang, throw, or yell run even more freely than usual.
One of the tricks Polly has developed over time is this high pitched screech. Modeled after a scream Pip uses when he is overly excited, the screech starts quietly and seems like it is going to build into a full scream, but as her voice gets louder it starts to break apart. Instead of a single clear tone, the sound rattles around in her throat, giving the final pitch a slight gargle at its apex. She usually deploys this screech during meal times after she’s had her fill and is starting to get bored with being strapped into her chair. The sound echoes around our kitchen and effectively ends any other conversation taking place. It also has the power to bring Pip to tears.
Pip has never been able to make sense of the screech. To him, it seems random and unpredictable. He can’t correlate it with any other regular happening and so the screech doesn’t have a set place in his knowledge of the world. Sometimes he finds it funny. Sometimes he finds it annoying. Oftentimes, it scares him. All he knows for sure is that he can’t ignore it. He has to react in some way. So, when Polly looks directly at Pip in the instance before she lets loose, you can feel Pip tense up in expectation. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen but more often than not it all ends with him huddling up on his chair with his hands covering his ears – a reaction that Polly finds very amusing.
And so, on this night when Pip was tired and whiny and Polly was acting especially mischievous, the conditions were ripe for some theatrics. About halfway through dinner Polly let loose with a full throated screech. Pip dove for cover. After about fifteen seconds of this, I got up and took Polly out of the kitchen in order to move her away from Pip. After a couple of minutes or so when Pip began to calm down, I walked with Polly back into the kitchen to continue with dinner.
Then Polly took things to a new level.
Walking back into the kitchen, she went around the table to the chair where Pip was sitting. She does this frequently during mealtimes. Usually she just wants to say hello or see what Pip is doing up close for a moment. This time, however, she walked over, looked straight into Pip’s eyes, and let out the screech again. This caught all of us off guard and sent Pip into a whole new round of convulsions that were capped off with him wailing, “Why? Why? Why did she do that? Why?” I finally hustled over and carried her once again out of the kitchen.
After Pip had settled down again, Polly and I came back into the kitchen to try and finish off our meal. Polly had different ideas. She walked right back to the same spot from which I had whisked her away a few minutes before. I didn’t move to stop her because I couldn’t imagine that she would do the same thing again. It was such a brazenly deliberate move that I didn’t think she was capable of it. And yet, there I went hauling her a third time out into the living room while Pip shed still more tears. With this, we mercifully brought an end to dinner for the night.
Ava took Pip on to her lap and tried to explain to him what was going on. She told him that Polly was tired and was using her ‘wild animal noise’ to get a reaction out of him. Its tough to know exactly what Pip understood but as we talked it through several more times, he was able to calm down. Also, as we repeated this explanation over and over, the ‘wild animal noise’ morphed into the ‘wild beast noise’ and then finally into the ‘call of the wildebeest.’
This last phrase, ‘the call of the wildebeest,’ seems to have tickled his funny bone, and in doing so may have finally enabled him to fit Polly’s screech into a fixed locus of meaning. Because today at lunch when Polly broke out the screech once again, I asked Pip, “Is that a wildebeest I hear?” and he responded with a smile and a short laugh. No tears, no nervousness. Just a confident nod of bemused acknowledgement. Polly, ever watchful, decided to try banging the table with her sippy cup instead.
Early on we decided that the best way for our family to deal with an open house day was to set things up the night before and then get out of Dodge after breakfast the next morning. That way we don’t spend the entire morning trying to corral Pip’s and Polly’s natural inclinations towards chaos or fretting about what other little things Ava and I might do to make the house look just a touch nicer. To accomplish this, we have taken to going on day trips.
The past two open house days we have ventured out to a state park that is about an hour from our house. The state park has a small lake, a nice wooden, A-frame lodge, a few hiking trails, and a nature center with some rehabing raptors and a live mountain lion. We take a picnic lunch with us and go play in a creek that runs along the side of one of the hiking trails. It’s a wonderfully peaceful spot. The creek runs down between two hills and is just deep enough to cover your ankles. The running water and the shade of the summer foliage overhead keeps things cool even when the temps are breaking the 90 degree barrier. And the kids love having the freedom to play. They throw rocks in the water, traipse up and down through the shallow areas, float sticks through the mini-rapids, and look under rocks for crawdads. Throw in a few nostalgic memories of creek-walking from my own childhood and the general absence of other people and this excursion has become one of my favorite things to do as a family.
All that fun does take its toll, however, and when we get back to the house in the afternoon, everyone is exhausted. Now, this type of exhaustion can be really nice if you have the chance to languish in it - maybe have a beer or some ice cream, then put your feet up and watch the sun set. Unfortunately, the kids are not ready for that kind of recovery process yet. They are more in the coax-some-food-into-me-then-put-me-in-the-bath kind of stage. This is a fine process, too, though much less relaxing for Ava and me than the beer and sunset version.
So, two weekends ago, we had an open house, we went out for the day to the state park, and we returned home tired. We dragged the kids into the house, and they set about acting out in their established ways. For Pip this means that he becomes whiny. He wants this, he wants that. If something isn’t exactly right, tears will follow. Polly, in contrast, becomes mischievous. She’ll push the limits on things, letting her impulses to bang, throw, or yell run even more freely than usual.
One of the tricks Polly has developed over time is this high pitched screech. Modeled after a scream Pip uses when he is overly excited, the screech starts quietly and seems like it is going to build into a full scream, but as her voice gets louder it starts to break apart. Instead of a single clear tone, the sound rattles around in her throat, giving the final pitch a slight gargle at its apex. She usually deploys this screech during meal times after she’s had her fill and is starting to get bored with being strapped into her chair. The sound echoes around our kitchen and effectively ends any other conversation taking place. It also has the power to bring Pip to tears.
Pip has never been able to make sense of the screech. To him, it seems random and unpredictable. He can’t correlate it with any other regular happening and so the screech doesn’t have a set place in his knowledge of the world. Sometimes he finds it funny. Sometimes he finds it annoying. Oftentimes, it scares him. All he knows for sure is that he can’t ignore it. He has to react in some way. So, when Polly looks directly at Pip in the instance before she lets loose, you can feel Pip tense up in expectation. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen but more often than not it all ends with him huddling up on his chair with his hands covering his ears – a reaction that Polly finds very amusing.
And so, on this night when Pip was tired and whiny and Polly was acting especially mischievous, the conditions were ripe for some theatrics. About halfway through dinner Polly let loose with a full throated screech. Pip dove for cover. After about fifteen seconds of this, I got up and took Polly out of the kitchen in order to move her away from Pip. After a couple of minutes or so when Pip began to calm down, I walked with Polly back into the kitchen to continue with dinner.
Then Polly took things to a new level.
Walking back into the kitchen, she went around the table to the chair where Pip was sitting. She does this frequently during mealtimes. Usually she just wants to say hello or see what Pip is doing up close for a moment. This time, however, she walked over, looked straight into Pip’s eyes, and let out the screech again. This caught all of us off guard and sent Pip into a whole new round of convulsions that were capped off with him wailing, “Why? Why? Why did she do that? Why?” I finally hustled over and carried her once again out of the kitchen.
After Pip had settled down again, Polly and I came back into the kitchen to try and finish off our meal. Polly had different ideas. She walked right back to the same spot from which I had whisked her away a few minutes before. I didn’t move to stop her because I couldn’t imagine that she would do the same thing again. It was such a brazenly deliberate move that I didn’t think she was capable of it. And yet, there I went hauling her a third time out into the living room while Pip shed still more tears. With this, we mercifully brought an end to dinner for the night.
Ava took Pip on to her lap and tried to explain to him what was going on. She told him that Polly was tired and was using her ‘wild animal noise’ to get a reaction out of him. Its tough to know exactly what Pip understood but as we talked it through several more times, he was able to calm down. Also, as we repeated this explanation over and over, the ‘wild animal noise’ morphed into the ‘wild beast noise’ and then finally into the ‘call of the wildebeest.’
This last phrase, ‘the call of the wildebeest,’ seems to have tickled his funny bone, and in doing so may have finally enabled him to fit Polly’s screech into a fixed locus of meaning. Because today at lunch when Polly broke out the screech once again, I asked Pip, “Is that a wildebeest I hear?” and he responded with a smile and a short laugh. No tears, no nervousness. Just a confident nod of bemused acknowledgement. Polly, ever watchful, decided to try banging the table with her sippy cup instead.
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