Milestone

So Cleo just learned, this past week, to sit up from a prone position. Below, you can check it out for yourself, in a brief video. And, for a bonus point, can you identify the Cleo-appropriate music that's playing in the background?



If you'd like it, here's the answer, in video form.

Parentheses

A few days ago, in reading the preface to a 1995 book on feminist art criticism, I came across this sentence: "There is still a marked 'difference' in the way that women artists are referred to in general critical reviews." I nodded. Be it 1995 or 2010; the point holds. In fact, the basic validity of the claim is the very reason that the sloganed tee-shirts worn by Zaha Hadid's staff replied at the 2003 opening of her first major public building, the Cincinnati Art Center, worked so well. “Would they call me a diva," read the shirts, "if I were a guy?” No, we admit, they almost surely wouldn't.

But if there are still gendered norms in the realm of contemporary art, how about in the arena of parenthood? Ah, you betchum. Or, at least, so it seems to me as I move about Baltimore with Cleo. A man with a baby is constantly both the object of gendered suppositions and assumptions.

Examples. When I bring Cleo to the Towson library, for instance, for storytime, the kind female librarian kindly tells me that I'll be more comfortable if I adjust the height of the Baby Bjorn in which I carry my daughter. Thanks, ma'am, but no thanks; after 50 hours of wearing the thing, I've actually more or less figured it out. And when I call the doctor to ask for their advice, after finding that Cleo has her first fever, and leave my number, it's perhaps revealing that they then call my wife, rather than me. Oh, you can hear them saying, he's probably at work. Instead of bothering him, let's call the mom. Who happens, unfortunately, to be on this day at work, while I fret over Cleo. Or, finally, have a look at an article called "The Children's Table," in the most recent issue of Urbanite. The writer describes a sing-along at a local bookstore, and evokes "an audience of a dozen antsy toddlers and their attentive moms (plus one doting dad)."

Why the parentheses? Why not simply moms, and a dad (or, better, why not, simply, parents)? Well, you know the answer as well as I do: because of decades of divisions of labor; because of stereotypes driven home in a hundred different ways; because Ward Cleaver was always at the office during the day. And so on. Patterns of parenting have certainly changed in the last decade or two, but being even a part-time dad is still considered, it seems, unusual.

But of course - for let's be honest - that very fact can also prompt some really kind reactions. I doubt, for instance, that the warm looks that greet us as we stroll through the grocery store, for example, are given out to the mothers who are doing every bit as much, or more, parenting as I am. Simply because it's not an entirely common sight, a man with a baby can still evoke a smile, or a generous comment. And while such reactions might ultimately be due to what Bush 43 once called the soft bigotry of low expectations, I eat them up nonetheless.

And so I wonder, prompted by Hadid's rhetorical question: does that make me, in turn, a diva, too?

& music perhaps

Didja hear any of Fresh Air today? An interesting interview with Randal Keynes, the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin and the author of a new book on the evolutionist (and the owner of a terrific plodding, gravelly English voice). Keynes opens his book, apparently, by pointing to a wonderful document written by Darwin as he tried to decide whether to pursue marriage or not. (You can see the document, and a transcription, here).

For the most part, as Terry Gross pointed out, it's a remarkably contemporary document in its central focus: the act of juggling one's goals, one's family responsibilities, and the pleasures and pressures of marriage. Those same themes formed the subject, for instance, the feature story in last Sunday's Washington Post: an involving jeremiad by a working mother who simply cannot believe the time management specialists who tell her that she actually enjoys (in addition to her constant feeling of being overworked) 30 hours of leisure time per week. Brigid Schulte, please meet Charles Darwin - who realized 170 years ago that being a husband and father meant "Loss of time."

But Darwin's list of pros and cons, of course, is far from simply dystopic. Yes, it is, as Gross noted, more than a little sexist, but Darwin's clearly attuned to some of the real appeals of home life. He never knew, I gather the pleasure of watching Jeopardy! with a wife over homemade tacos, but you can't argue with a sofa and a good fire (perhaps the 1839 version of a TV show?) either. The heartfelt, almost aching parenthetical "if it please God" qualifying fatherhood strikes me as especially touching, too: even now, when infants are much more likely to survive than they were in Darwin's London, there's an element of grace and surprise that colors the entire endeavor.

And, finally, there's music. Darwin clearly associates it with his wife - which makes sense, as many women of his class and era would have been adroit piano players, or singers. Nowadays, I suppose it's rarer to find, upon arriving home, one's wife weaving a melody on the upright. But Darwin's point still holds, in other senses. At several points over the last week, L.'s put on a Lyle Lovett CD, and spun through the living room with Cleo in her arms. And it's not unknown to hear her singing, softly, a lullaby to our little daughter. Where there's a wife, then, there's still often music.

With an ear of tin, I've got few gifts in that direction. But at least, like Darwin - who decided, of course, in favor of marriage and fatherhood - I'm aware of some of the pleasures that come with such decisions. Sure, I can't say I've enjoyed the "conversation of clever men at clubs" very often of late. (Unless you count that quick exchange about the Ravens loss at school today...). But companionship? Sure. Chit-chat? Often. & music, perhaps? Most certainly.

Names and titles

So. After seven and a half months, perhaps it's fair to ask: is Cleo a Cleo? I mean, really. Couldn't she just as well be, say, a Peggy Sue? Does she not exhibit tendencies typical of, say, a Delilah? Or, for that matter, wouldn't she have turned out just about the same if we had named her Burt?

While we'll admit that we don't have any hard proof, we think Cleo is pretty Cleo-ish. After all, she hasn't worn a baseball cap yet, which means she's not a Randy, and for a host of reasons - most of them related to an apparently missing predilection for mushroom-hunting - she doesn't really seem like an Ute.

But what does it mean to be a Cleo? I'm not sure either L. or I know exactly what we mean by that, as we don't really have many other Cleos to point to. But here, in photographic form, is more or less what I think of when I say Cleo. And, viewed from that angle, our Cleo seems to deserve the name, for she too leans with little regard for her safety or for the rules of gravity, all while holding random objects in a deathlike grip.

A-ha, you say. He's joking. But not really. Because shouldn't there be, after all, some correlation between name and named? Yesterday, while playing with Cleo, I thought I'd put the notion to the test. It was a cloudy morning, and so I put George Winston's Forest into the CD player, and forwarded it to track 5, Cloudy This Morning. The soft music rose and fell behind Cleo as she tried to eat a plastic block, and rang a new bell repeatedly. Did it evoke clouds, or match the view outside the window? I can't say that it did, in any profound way; in fact, it occurred to me that the piece would work just as well if it were named something like Snorkeling over Coral Reef. It was a lovely piece, but didn't seem to be essentially cloudy.

So: oh for one. But there must be, I thought, better examples of names that fit their wearers. And, if I had had more than 17 free minutes, I might have thought of one. But that's where you come in, dear readers. Any suggestions? What piece of music, or well-known celebrity, does fit their name to a tee? Or - because we're always open to alternatives - do names not matter this much? Are we all, on some level, Burts?

Dreams

8:18 p.m. of a Thursday, and I just got back from a deeply pleasant 3o hours in New York City. Now, don't get me wrong: I really do like spending big blocks of time in the colorful, plush world of Cleo. But, that said, I couldn't resist the occasional feeling, while in NYC, that I had somehow been granted some cushy block of R&R, far from the chaotic front. Medieval manuscripts at the Morgan; a dinner with my brother and his fiancee; comparing Herbert Muschamp's review of The New Museum with the real thing, in person: it was a rejuvenating break from the block- and hippo- and pear puree-filled trenches of modern fatherhood.

It was also, I realized as I prepared for the bus trip north, only my second night away from Cleo. Given that she's been around for about 225 nights, and that I've been within 30 feet of her for 223 of those, perhaps it's not surprising then that I woke up, suddenly and panicked, last night at about 1, and realized that I couldn't see her anywhere in the living room where I was sleeping. Only half awake, I had the strong sense that I was supposed to have been caring for her, but had somehow lost her. Under the table? No. Behind my pillow? Not there. And only very slowly did it dawn on me that she was safe at home in Baltimore, with Mommy in the next room.

Clearly, then, unusual travel can prompt unusual dreams. In point of fact, though, I've had comparable dreams in recent weeks when I'm in at home, as well. The same sense of having lost her has occurred to me a couple of times, in the middle of the night. And over the weekend, I had a dream that was utterly simple, but that felt, during the dreaming ominously tragic: I dreamt that I woke to find Cleo a four-year-old, happy but no longer a baby, and no longer able to fit in the crook of my arm as I move about the house. Sure, I look forward to when she's four, but there was something deeply sad about her imagined premature maturity, and when I woke I realized that I'm not yet quite done with her being a baby.

And, thankfully, neither is she. She sleeps now, at 8:33, just down the hall from me and L.: a small and simple family whole again.

Connoisseurship

Back in the late summer, on a visit to Chapel Hill, I joined my folks for a drink at the sublime Caffe Driade. You more or less know the setting, even if you haven't been there: a few bearded grad students on laptops; faint scent of American Spirits from an outdoor table; distant cry of a cicada. And, when we sat down inside, a jazz standard on the stereo.

D'you know that piece? my dad asked, genially. And I did, I'd heard it many times, but (shades of freshman-year art history exams here: Bernini? Borromini?) I couldn't place it with certainty. Coltrane? I think I said. No. That's Dave Brubeck, my dad said. Somewhere, in some remote Valhalla, the little-known god of jazz wept a few quiet tears.

But Cleo offers, sweet-faced, a chance at redemption. I may be no jazz connoisseur, but as Cleo played on her large red rug today, with Brubeck's famous Time Out (it was Take Five that was on the coffeehouse stereo) in the background, I realized that all parents, to some degree, are connoisseurs of their own children. That cry, in that tone, at that time: she must be hungry. Right leg kicking? She's content, and pondering her next move. That slight drag of the hand across the eye: it's nearly nap time.

And so on, and so on. Giovanni Morelli, one of the greatest connoisseurs in the history of the art, made a career out of a close study of the way in which details such as earlobes and fingernails, in Renaissance paintings, could reveal authorship. Less famous, but not always less astute, are the legions of parents who fluently read their own baby's specific vocabulary of wails and gestures, of hands and ears, and hands to ears.

Envy

Here's a parenting tip I haven't seen articulated in any of the several books that make up our little lighthouse of a library these days: as you drive your wife to work, talk in calm tones about whatever comes to mind (last night's dream, set in Panama; the convicted mayor of Baltimore; whether it's acceptable to leave Christmas lights up through July, etc.). Your baby, out of a sense of security or a sense of boredom - better, in this case, not to know! - will fall asleep in her car seat after about six minutes. You then drop your wife off, drive to Hampden, find a parking spot, and read the Qur'an for the duration of the nap.

That, at least, has been a relatively reliable pattern over the past few weeks. As a result, I'm now on page 332, and on pace to finish it on some side street shortly before the new semester starts. Sure, reading it in a tent in the Empty Quarter might be more aesthetically empathetic, but, well, as the book itself says, God won't give you more than you can bear. And I can bear, these days, a temporary respite from active parenting, even if it's in an idle car on a 27-degree morning.

There are a number of prominent themes in the Qur'an: God's singularity and greatness, and the consequent futility of idolatry; the imminent judgment (and, with it, the rewarding of believers and punishment of disbelievers); Muhammad's status as a messenger, rather than as a miracle-worker. But one that caught my eye was slightly less obvious: a series of warnings against the negative consequences of envy. The word's used seven times in my translation, and in rather gnostic ways, as in 45.17: "And We [i.e., God] gave them [the children of Israel] clear arguments in the affair, but they did not differ until after knowledge had come to them out of envy among themselves." Such a claim can be - and has been - read in various ways, but it's clear that envy is the source of friction, and fraction.

Which is enough to get a guy in a cooling car on a snowy street thinking. I suppose that we've all encountered envy in a rather wide range of forms. Salieri envied Mozart his sublime natural gift for composition; Picasso, we read, envied his father his aristocratic height. I envy my neighbor - especially over the past week! - his second home in distant Palm Springs; he, perhaps, envies his Californian neighbor his skill with a nine-iron. Often predictable, mundane, and often trivial, the subjects of envy point to our own insecurities, wishes, and acculturated priorities. And, as the Qur'an implies, the phenomenon of envy may be ubiquitous, but it rarely leads to much good. It's a chain with endless links.

But, as the baby snores lightly in her car seat, we wonder: does she envy us? And do we envy her? Well, yes, to the second: if I can envy a house in Palm Springs, I can certainly envy, too, a time of life that's spent without duty, that's dedicated merely to playing and to exploring. But as soon as I write that, I realize that she, in turn, may well envy her parents, as well. How lovely to be able to walk! To grasp things fluidly, and almost without thinking. She may, of course, not feel such a thing as envy, but the very fact that the next few years of her life will be largely dedicated to imitating us, and other adults, suggests that Cleo feels some affection for what she does not yet have.

So perhaps we envy each other. But, instead of wording it in such an oppositional way, let's end by phrasing it more positively. After all, she may sleep in the back seat while I read in the front, but such an arrangement feels more delightful than dichotomous. Which, I think, is a realization that also lay at the basis of a 17th-century essay on envy by Sir George Mackenzie (1636-91). "We may cure envy in ourselves," he wrote, "either by considering how useless or how ill these things were for which we envy our neighbors; or else how we possess as much or as good things. If I envy his greatness, I consider that he wants my quiet: as also I consider that he possibly envies me as much as I do him..."

Indeed. For while a nap in the car is a pleasure, so too is listening to a napper's soft breaths.

Rare treats

It struck me today, in a thought both ridiculously obscure and rather overwhelming all at once, that the average 19th-century European presumably never heard any of the symphonies of Beethoven, or Mozart, or, well, any composer. Before the advent of recorded music, everyday middle class Europeans could certainly play, or listen to a friend play, many of the solo pieces for keyboard that existed. And, if they lived in especially musical circles, perhaps they witnessed a family performance of a quartet, or a local rendering of a trio. But a symphony? You had to go to Vienna, or Paris, or Milan, for such a thing - and most peasants in Calabria, or potato farmers in County Galway, weren't making such trips very regularly. Perhaps they knew, by description or through a whistled rendering, the famous opening notes of Eroica. But that's rather like knowing a painting by Vermeer through a Xerox of a 3 by 3 inch photograph.

Or, you might say, like knowing a banana simply through a description of its taste. Which, by the way, is how most Europeans in the 19th century would have known the fruit. The banana was known in ancient Malaysia, and China, and Alexander the Great may have tasted one, but the modern West came to bananas rather late. It's generally agreed that the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was a watershed moment, as bananas were sold to wary but curious customers for 10 cents a piece. And Britain? The poor folks living under the crown had to wait until 1902 for the first load of commercially refrigerated bananas. Thus, as a 2002 piece in The Observer noted, "a century ago hardly anyone in Britain had tasted or even seen a banana."

Which brings us to Cleo. Before today, she had tasted:
1. Her mother's milk, daily.
2. A range of objects not intended for consumption, including but not limited to: dozens of toys, most of the made in China; her car seat; the covers of several tiny books; the zippers on all of my zippered sweaters; her parents' index fingers; and numerous receipts from Whole Foods, never swallowed but often sucked with gusto.
3. Pear, with clear favor, and sometimes with an admixture of rice cereal.
4. Sweet potato: no dice.
5. Applesauce, made by a friend, with puckered lips, but apparent acceptance.
6. Avocado, with mixed results, and little hint of her father's genetic tilt towards all things Mexican.

And today, folks, I took a banana - a banana grown hundreds of miles away, and a novelty to any Victorian - pushed part of it into her mesh Munchkin Fresh Baby Food Feeder (ah, the names, folks, the names! Being a parent nowadays is like living in a David Foster Wallace novel), and watched her go. You can see the results in the video at the top of today's entry. And, for best results, turn up the Beethoven while watching, and enjoy living in the 21st century:

A few thoughts...

...that occurred while listening to a recording of Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto funebre for the last time, before passing it along to the thrift store:

1. In the late 1970s, my family lived on the Aventine Hill, in Rome, near Santa Sabina, and just up the slope from where Cleopatra supposedly stayed during her time in the city. Many mornings, while my brother and I still slept, or while we rose, my dad walked down the hill to a bakery, where he'd buy freshly baked rosette, or rolls, and they'd be on the table, still warm and crisp, when we sat down for breakfast. Today, on an 18-degree Sunday morning, I made my way over to Whole Foods, and bought a loaf of just-baked Tuscan bread. It was still warm as I set out for home, for Sabina Avenue, where, instead of a Cleopatra, a Cleo awaited. Such a simple product, but so sublime: slight taste of salt, hint of fire, and a subtle sweetness. L. and I ate, I think, nine pieces, while Cleo decided that two tiny mouthfuls was just about enough - much as Mikey and I, I bet, felt in 1978 that a single rosetta was feast enough.

2. I got this CD at a moving-out party hosted by an English colleague who once wrote a deeply enjoyable book about readers and reading, and who once suggested that a reader should give every book 75 pages before deciding whether to continue or to put it down. That's generous, in my view; in the past, I've comfortably abandoned ship after a page or two, in certain dire cases. But, aware of her suggestion, I've applied the same principle of open-mindedness to Hartmann, and have patiently given his concerto three listens. The fourth movement, in my mind, is the most rewarding, as there are a few passages that involve a rather delicate tension: sustained notes on violins feel like threads drawn slowly, in the creation of a spare tapestry. But perhaps more compelling than the music, really, is Hartmann's story. He remained in Nazi Germany as a dissdent, and even saw, one evening, 20,000 prisoners being force-marched from Dachau, as the Allied troops advanced. "Unending was the stream," he wrote, after waking to the same line of prisoners that he'd seen the night before, "unending the misery, unending the sorrow."

The world is pleasure; the world is pain. We enjoy, for now, and as fully as we can, the bread we can muster.

Teeth

So Cleo has her first tooth - in fact, she's got her first two teeth. Or, at least, so says a delighted L., who claims to have spotted both teeth when Cleo opened wide during a peal of laughter. Me? All I see is a wonderfully odd and irregular gumline that reminds me of a topographical model of some ridge on the ocean floor. But, sure enough, when your run a finger along her lower jaw, you soon encounter a hard spot.

What does that mean for Cleo? Well, a baby's primary teeth are placeholders: they maintain a space in the jaws for the more permanent teeth that are developing beneath the gums. At the same time, their arrival can obviously also help a baby chew, and to make a wider range of sounds. And, oh yeah: the ADA recommends that a baby be seen as soon as his or her first tooth appears. Welcome to the real world, young lady.

But if that's what having teeth means to a baby, it's also worth noting that the phrase can mean a few different things in a metaphorical sense, as well. In its most familiar guise, the phrase refers to a dimension of latent power, or aggression - or bite. Hence a recent article on Russia in The Atlantic that argued that "the bear still has teeth." Abstract that one level further, and you soon realize that something as abstract as music can have teeth, too. Thus a D.C.-based band named Swivelhead could tell the Washington Post, in 1993, that "our music has teeth in it, hard guitar and hip-hop style."

And that, folks, is what I was really after. Having proven through an irrefutable transitive logic that my six-month-old daughter has hip-hop style, I wish you a very happy evening, and step offstage.