Da solo (sola)

My apologies, folks, for the diminished pace of late: I've been trying to gracefully steer my fall courses towards that final landing strip (classes end this coming Friday), while also preparing the first few class meeting for the spring (which has meant, among other things, reading the Qur'an for the first time). Add to that the fact that I spent most of my word hoard on a conference talk and a revised article, both due earlier this month, and am blocking out a 1,500-word exhibition review due next week, and you'll begin to see why I haven't won any recent Blogger of the Week awards.

But here's one for you, written while eating a sandwich, before driving to campus. Although it's true that Cleo is rarely more than a foot from either me or L. at any point in the day, there are still a few rare moments, every now and then, when she's clearly doing her own thing, and seems almost oblivious to our presence. The reasons for her distraction vary - it might be a good ceiling fan, or a bout with a stuffed something or other - but the effect is always rather touching: there's a unique appeal about watching her simply involve herself, without depending on us or gauging our reaction. Think about it: we'll be driving L. to work, and there will might be a happy occupied silence in the back, and then suddenly a little shriek of excitement, or a long string of carefully rendered nonsense syllables.

In an essay called "Patrimony," Michael Hofmann once observed, of his son, that “I feel he exists most strongly when he is independent of me in some tiny way. (My looking at him does nothing to help establish him.) When he lifts his hands to touch the tufts of hair over his ears… or taps at his head with his wooden hammer to test the effect. Then he is agent and acted upon, and I am nowhere.” Or, if not nowhere, I'd add, perhaps in a delightful somewhere: in the role of parent, to a child who's becoming an individual.

That's not to say that I'm aiming at a completely detached or voyeuristic parenting style. Not at all; in fact, most of my experience so far has been characterized by a virtually total immersion. There's no distance, literally or symbolically, and so I spend much of the day with Cleo in my arms, or against my chest, and milk stains on my sweater. And, sure, there's an appeal to that closeness, too. It's the appeal, roughly speaking, that Ellen Johnson once noted in the paintings of Jackson Pollock: “Being in their actual presence is somewhat like sitting in the front row at a symphony concert – one feels mixed up with the music, physically involved in the very process of making it.” That's a good description, I think, of parenting an infant.

And it's also a good explanation of why it's nice, occasionally, to hear or to see Cleo establishing her own independence. Sitting in the front row can be wonderful. But so, too, can listening to the absorbed cellist from the back row.