Signs

In early 1968, the Grateful Dead began - after an encounter with Alla Rakha - to hold lengthy practices in which they experimented with a range of unusual Indian time signatures. The band played for hours at a time in cycles of seven, and eleven, creating melodic phrasings that could overarch such unconventional time signatures. And, according to Peter Lavezzoli, in The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, they eventually learned to improvise in those cycles "until it became second nature. As with Indian classical music, freedom was attained through discipline."

Freedom through discipline. The chaotic household that L. and I run these days probably doesn't qualify as disciplined in any sense of the term, but we have tried, in our scattershot manner, to teach Cleo a few works and a few signs over the course of the last half year. Teach, how? Well, through simple repetition: I remember saying 'hands up' to Cleo, and extending her tiny arms upwards, when she could barely sit up - and if I did it that once, I'm sure I've done it a dozen times, at other moments. On Mondays, we always attend a reading group for tots at the local library that culminates in a chant that asks the kids, among other things, 'Can you stomp with two feet, two feet?... Can you wave bye-bye, bye-bye?" And the ridiculous number of times that L. and I have simply clapped for Cleo, when she's done something cute, has also acted as a prompt.

And today, it all came together, for a brief moment. While holding Cleo in my lap on the rope swing in the meadow (at 1202 Sabina, we swing even when it's 90-something out...), I babbled my usual nonsense rhymes and songs, and then wondered what might happen if I asked her to clap. She clapped (my hand around her little belly). Arms up? She raised her arms. Asked to stomp, she waved her feet in the air, as we arced back and forth. And can you wave bye-bye? Sure: we'd just done the same at the library, two hours earlier. Overjoyed - in the predictable way of a father - I tried to recreate it, when we got home, and the result is visible above.

Cleo can't talk yet. She still growls like a wampa, when excited. But it's awesome to realize that she can communicate, in a rather nuanced way, when she wants to. Limited discipline, in this case, has yielded at least a degree of freedom.

Analogy

If I had to compare fatherhood, thus far, to a single piece of music, what might I choose?

Glad you asked.

One composition that seems analagous, in a very abstract manner, is Yves Klein's iconoclastic Symphonie Monotone. An ensemble plays a single held note for - well, for at least a minute, and in some performances considerably longer. And then they maintain a held silence for a roughly equal time.

Life with an infant is hectic, unpredictable, and sloppy. But it's also characterized by a certain amount of rote repetition. Lift block, drop block. What does the cow say? The cow says, Moo. Sip from sippy cup. Lift block. Why are you crying? Are you hungry? Drop block. The cow says, Moo. Crawl to next room. Are you hungry? Lift block. And so on. Hold for an hour or two.

And then, suddenly, silence. Cleo, presumably full of thoughts of falling blocks and cows, sleeps. She sleeps on her belly, rump in the air; she sleeps on her side, arms akimbo; she sleeps wedged into the corner of her crib. The house ticks as the wood planks of the stairs expand. A dog, in the distance, barks. An unmuffled motorcycle roars on the road above. Otherwise, silence, throwing ambient noise into the foreground.

Klein's music might seem, in written form, boring. But, performed, it is surprising, suspenseful, whimsical, and even, perhaps, sublime. Much as mimicking a cow, for more than two months, can become something more than mere repetition. Instead, it becomes parenthood.

Overlooked

Does it ever bother me, you may wonder, that the number of public readers of this blog has not increased in the last twelve months? That a graph of my online audience, over the course of a year, might look eerily like a graph of China's population over the past century? That I have yet to find a way to turn ruminations on fatherhood into a business model rivalling Facebook's?

It does not. Ratings be damned; this blog, my dear reader, is for you.

Jonathan Franzen recently wrote a rather passionate essay in which he declared his fondness for Christina Stead's 70-year-old, and generally forgotten, novel The Man who Loved Children. In suggesting that the novel's reputation has suffered, in part, because the author's "allegiances are too dubious for the feminists, and she’s not enough like a man for everybody else," Franzen went on to argue that the book is, nevertheless, worth a second look. Or, at the very least, a first look; Franzen recommends toting to the beach, in that big bag that contains sunscreen, shades, and all of the good intentions that we shelve until our week-long vacation.

If a novel can be overlooked, what else might be? Well, pretty much anything, once you think about it. Mike and Mike spent much a morning the other day debating the most overlooked (or underrated, in their parlance) sports figures of all time: Fran Tarkenton, Oscar Robertson, and Frank Robinson all got some votes. (But not Jimmie Foxx? With 500 homers by the age of 32?). And of course, given that this blog always tries to think about the musical side of things, we should also mention the common comment that a particular composer, or piece, is overlooked. I may not agree with the Amazon reviewer who wrote that "Haydn is one of the most overlooked composers in the history of Western music." But, sure, someone like Sergei Taneyev might well deserve the title.

Anyway: once one begins to think about overlooking historical figures, one also begins to wonder - if one is a reflective and somewhat insecure parent, at least - if one might be overlooking their own baby's interests, or talents. And that might lead a parent to stop, suddenly, cutting all of the baby's food into bite-sized pieces, or serving it up in proffered spoonfuls, and to simply place a bowl and spoon before the youngster. And, sure enough, an overlooked talent emerges. Perhaps not a talent for eating, exactly, but a talent, at least, for engendering pure chaos. As documented in the video above.

So: thank you, reader, for not overlooking this post. Your patience, in turn, is noted.

Father's Day

So I woke, today, to a wonderful pile of presents - a Father's Day giftset put together by L., and two thoughtful packages from my own parents. Almonds, golf balls, photos, and a copy - already treasured - of Taro Gomi's classic Everyone Poops. And then, near the bottom, a small tract published in 1954 and entitled A Successful Guide to Fatherhood, by O. Spurgeon English, M.D.

Turn to page 4 - making sure to enjoy the dated line drawings as you do - and you'll find this: "If a man enjoyed a happy childhood relationship with his father, he will probably find it easy to love and take an active interest in his own children."

I've never really thought, I've realized this week, of fathering as a series of choices, or of Father's Day as a deserved holiday. Passively, I'd always more or less assumed that fathers were simply fathers, and always had been, in some sense; after all, as long as I've known my own dad, he's been my dad. It's hard to conceive of him in some other, non-fatherly role. For that reason, I'd thought of Father's Day as somehow comparable to, say, a Slovakian Day. One simply is, or isn't; that's all.

But the small mound of gifts in our bedroom seems to argue, again and again, that fathering is in fact an ongoing activity. And the inscription on the card, from my father, reminds me that he is not simply my father - but that he continues to offer an example to me, and continues to think of fatherhood as an activity, rather than as an empty, ordained title.

And that, I think, is why the passage from Spurgeon English, above, sounds correct to me. It's easy, I find again and again, to love Cleo. And now, a year and a fraction into being a father, I'm starting to understand why. One major reason lies about five and a half hours south of us.

Choice

There was a terrific piece in the Times on Sunday that focused on the attitudes and experiences of American Muslim women who wear both a burqa and niqab -a conservative layering of cloth that covers their body and most of their face. I'd read several analyses of, and histories of, the veil in Islam before, but had never encountered one in which the wearers themselves spoke so freely, and with a disarming mix of piety and humor, about their experience. By the time I got to the end of the article, I felt that I understood a choice made by tens of thousands of women, in much greater depth than I had.

And that choice was thrown into even greater relief if one simply allowed one's eyes to drift, for a moment, from the article. The bulk of the piece appeared on page 12; opposite, on page 13, the Evening Hours column featured small photos of a number of New York socialites, including a young woman in a miniskirt, heels, and a rather vacuous, pleading gaze towards the camera. She wore the opposite of a veil, it seemed, in her bald attempt to solicit the desire or curiosity of the absent viewer.

I'm not sure that Cleo will ever stand before her closet, while preparing for an evening out, and say, Niqab or miniskirt? But, in a more abstract sense, she will face - as we all do, at times - the common choice between modesty and promiscuity, or between religiosity and secularism. But why stop there? On some level, we're always making choices, about how we represent ourselves, and what we choose to pursue. Any pretense that we live in a determinate world seems wishful, or too pat. Or, to put it differently, even the niqab and the miniskirt were never inevitable poles; rather, they were inventions, the result of sudden inspiration (or flirtation, or conviction).

That notion that we live in a sort of flux of constant decision is an idea that held a strong appeal for composers such as John Cage, who were affiliated with the group that called itself... well, Fluxus. Cage consistently created indeterminate scores that hinged upon a performer's choices instead of insisting upon a supposed absoluteness. For instance, in an Aria for solo voice written in 1958, Cage offered 20 pages of score without a declaration of tempo; that, and the very style of singing (scat? operatic? con brio?) were to be determined by the singer. The result was a piece that did away with the principle of the composer as a sort of god, and that yielded instead a work that was, at least on its face, the result of individual and local choices and decisions.

Niqab? Miniskirt? Cleo wears a onesie today, with a little Orioles logo on her breast. And while it would be a stretch to say that she chose it (she's usually more interested in a stuffed rabbit on the top of the changing table than in her outfit), it's a given that in a few years she'll be standing before her closet, with a choice of styles and tempos before her.

Modeling

Cleo may only be a year old, but L. and I have definitely decided - and the parenting books are all with us on this - that it's not too early to think about modeling.

Modeling, that is, types of behavior. Want your girl to have an open mind towards swimming? Well, throw yourself in the pool, before immersing her. Want her to develop into a toddler who eats more than Chicken McNuggets and pepperoni pizza? Have some yogurt and granola while she's watching - or, better yet, share some of your spinach and navy bean salad with her.

We do our best, in this regard, but there's no doubt in my mind that we've also modeled some less-than-desirable traits (and will continue to, with the roughly forty hours of background Univision broadcasts of World Cup soccer that will fill our kitchen over the next month). Still, it's fair to say that it's something we think about - which is why I was rubbed the wrong way by the twenty-something d.j. on WTMD this afternoon.

"Call in with your requests," he said, "as long as it's not Nickelback, or Three Doors Down." And then he announced - a bit smugly, it seemed to me - that the next song would be a tune by Macy Gray.

Now, I'm no fan of Nickelback, or opponent of Macy Gray, and certainly he can play whatever he wants to (this post is for you, Montana-based libertarians!). But, from another perspective, he was doing some modeling: creating a musical profile that he hoped we might then emulate.

And to what end, I wondered? Perhaps it will matter, someday, in some junior high lunchroom, whether Cleo likes Nickelback or not. (In fact, the more that I think about it, the more that I'm sure that it will.) But that's not the sort of moment for which we're really trying to prepare her. Or, more precisely, our modeling is meant, I think, to show her the possible joys of life, and the pleasures of a wide range of tastes. It's not meant, for the most part, to dissuade, or to rule out, or to mock. Sure, we don't want her putting her finger in the outlet, and we're doing our best to offer models that imply the appeal of a life that's not based around motel-based crystal meth labs. But if she winds up saying, to 13-year-old classmates, that she enjoys Three Doors Down, I don't think we'll consider ourselves failures as parents. As long as she then bites into the carrot sticks that we packed.

Taking shape

As the tomato vines on the western side of our house grow, and spread, and as the teams in the National League begin to tend towards their various destined positions (welcome to the cellar, Pirates! what took you so long?), babies born last summer also sprout, in ways that could also be called inexorable - if only vaguely predictable.

A year ago, of course, the idea of tiny Cleo ever walking seemed ludicrous to us. How could such a small being ever even learn to hold her head up, let alone to stand? And yet, just as the books said she would, she learned to look about, and then to sit, and then, on a February day, to crawl. Now she climbs the 14 stairs of our staircase with little trouble, pours water as though she were a Bernini triton, and totters around the edges of tables, and cabinets, and bathtubs.

And her friends? They, too, have sprouted. One, whom we met for the first time last week, just started taking her first free steps. Another June baby, down the street, now enjoys slow walks around the block, with her parents ambling nearby, and holds up a steady finger when asked how old she is. And a third, with whom we played on Friday, loves pushing carts, and plastic trucks, and hampers about the room. Each child's an individual - that much is clear, even after a few minutes of observation - but each seems to obey, too, a larger logic, an invisible pattern of growth.

In the November 11, 1911 issue of Musical Times, Ernest Newman wrote that "All really good form has the air of an improvisation, like a flower or crystal; the moment you can detect the joins in a piece of music, or see the reflective, deliberate processes by which a given section of it has been built up, all illusion as to its being an organic growth necessarily vanishes." If we agree with him, we might also say that parenting an infant is like listening to a musical composition with an excellent form. The child grows, and gradually develops an arsenal of abilities, and habits. But at no point are the joins garishly exposed, or baldly visible. Instead, they simply happen, as though destined. One day, you hold a wee swaddled, inert infant in your arms. A year later, she scoots across the room towards you on hands and knees, pulls on your pant leg, hoists herself up, and looks at you, expectantly.

Full speed ahead

Too fast, too fast. You put down your blogging pen for a couple of weeks, and before you're back, your only brother is married, the class of seniors you just spent four years with is graduated, the summer school course you're teaching is halfway over, and the Nationals have fallen from first to last. And - oh, yeah - your daughter just turned one.

It's been a busy, busy half month, but also a beautiful one. Cleo, it's true, has often been more consumed with her new favorite toy - a plastic graduated cylinder - than with her surroundings. But even she presumably noted, on some level, the sublime and peaceful beauty of the Tuscan-like valley against which her uncle wed a lovely bride. And perhaps she took in, in those rare moments at the swimming pool when she was not dribbling water out of one end of her cylinder, the silken softness of late-afternoon June sunlight in the Chesapeake watershed. And maybe, just maybe, as she cavalierly ignored the two perfect cakes that L. made for her first birthday party and petulantly insisted, instead, on a dinner of garlic beans and peas, she realized that all of the generous folks gathered in our lawn were there at least in part on her account.

Maybe, maybe not. Turning one doesn't automatically bring, I don't suppose, a sophisticated awareness of beauty and generosity. But it does, at the very least, bring one clear thing in these days of fears regarding allergies: a green light, for the first time, to eat peanut butter. So full speed ahead, Cleo: we're behind you all the way.