Ja-nee

To a certain extent, you could surmise the recent state of things here by examining the latest additions to Cleo's vocabulary. She now asks, regularly, for creamy yogurt: creamy, because much of the (quite tasty) yogurt here contains museli, which does not delight a toddler to whom change is anathema. She also claims, on occasional mornings, that it happens to be a holiday: a word that we taught her when National Youth Day offered her a one-day reprieve from daycare, and that she has subsequently embraced as a plank in her case that we not take her to school. And, finally, there's the impressive thermometer, which she said quite clearly this morning, as we checked her for a fever (none: it's abated, despite Cleo's heroic and downright physical efforts to prevent a single drop of medicine from crossing her lips).

But her word of choice, without question, is no. When we left Baltimore, a month ago, we left with a relatively agreeable one-year-old in our company. Now we're in South Africa with a full-blown two-year-old, and she is embracing her toddler's right to deny all requests, suggestions, and pleadings. Cleo, would you like to go to the garden? No. How about a breadstick? No. Okay, then - some creamy yogurt? And the no simply becomes more and more emphatic.

So we deal with it, in a variety of ways. L.'s taken to referring to Cleo, like the Republicans back home,as the party of no, and occasionally poses sham questions just for the sake of comic relief. Cleo, would you like a million dollars? No-o-o. I try, on the other hand, to formulate questions that are relatively no-proof. Cleo, we can go to the beach or to the aquarium. Which would you like? But even that's a losing hand, as it turns out that no is a surprisingly effective response. Hey, Cleo, it stopped raining. What should we do? No.

Occasionally, though, you'll get a silence in response, or a modest grunt, signifying assent - or, at least, the absence of violent opposition. Take advatange of those moments, my friend: they are the widest opening you'll get. No clear vocal opposition to pizza? We'll take two, please - quick, and with olives.

The other day, though, I learned of a local variant of no that I'm thinking of embracing myself. In the terrific opening section of Rian Malan's blistering book A Traitor's Heart, in which he details the seemingly intractable tension between coarse, violent Boers and displaced, resentful South African blacks, he tells a story about a conversation he had with a Boer officer. The Boer spoke at some length about the virtues of apartheid, and offered a lengthy defense of the nearly constant anti-black violence in the 1970s. He then looked to Malan, for confirmation of his views. Malan, in turn, reached for a Boer phrase: ja-nee, or yeah-no. Something like the American no, no, or yeah, well - either phrased in a high pitch, to imply a sort of agreement - the wording suggests assent, without totality. It's more of a conversational lubricant, I gather, than anything, but it allowed Malan to avoid offending the officer - and, too, to avoid betraying his own symapthies for blacks.

So: are we thrilled about Cleo's suddenly perpetual opposition? No. Can we deal with it? Well, ja-nee.

Under siege

Shostakovich wrote his seventh symphony while in Leningrad, as the city underwent a brutal Nazi siege. Alexander Borodin wrote his second, supposedly, while sick and confined to a bed. Vaughan Williams wrote his fifth while simultaneously spending most of his creative energy on his opera, The Pilgrim's Progress. And your faithful scribe, on a sunny day in Cape Town, writes in another stolen moment, as his little daugher sleeps.

And sleeps, and sleeps, because she's come down with her first ear infection, and needs her rest. Rather like the weather here - scudding clouds one hour; brilliant, heartbreaking sun the next - Cleo's health, and temperature, changed dramatically in a short time. Yesterday, I think, was the best day of the entire trip thus far: after a Sunday morning breakfast-and-swing stop at every Capetonian's favorite cafe/playground, we drove around Table Mountain, and down into Camps Bay, with its fair beach, rocky tide pools, seaside grocery, and occasional celebrity sightings. No Brangelina this time, but we had a terrific time splishing about between boulders, watching gulls shatter mussel shells, and eating coarse gouda sandwiches as our rolled-up pants legs dried. It's easy to forget, on the south side of the mountain, that this city has a beach culture; after seeing the surfers, and the paragliders, and the kids playing rugby in the sand, it was equally difficult to fathom ever forgetting that fact again.

Cleo held up well, but it was clear that she was flagging by the early evening, and when we got home, at around 5, she offered a vigorous indication that this was something more than mere exhaustion: let's just say that within a few minutes I was washing a rug, and then giving her a warm bath to wash off the day's rejected lunch. She went to bed shortly after, with little more than a gesture at a protest, slept a good, full night for the first time in weeks - and woke up with a 103-degree temperature, a breath that smelled of acetone, and a limp, listless little body. Time to call the doctor, in other words, and L. soon drove Cleo to the local clinic, where she was given the diagnosis - ear infection - and some antibiotics and stomach restoratives. And now Cleo is in the fourth hour of a mammoth nap, and the blog receives renewed attention.

One wishes, of course, that toddlers were never sick. And that cities were never besieged. But perhaps even such difficulties can bear fruit, both famous, as with a symphony, and modest, as in this missive.

Traces

Everywhere I look these days, I seem to find traces: residues, consequences, and manifestations of earlier actions or decisions. Yesterday Michelle Obama passed through Cape Town, displacing much of the entire university population in the process: her extensive security team arrived at the school several days early, abruptly announced that the dining hall would be shut down for three entire days, and began to erect curtains and to shut off highway entrances. The traces of power, I guess: the arrival of an emperor, or his wife, sends large ripples through any pool. But after breezing through campus, Obama then visited the District Six museum, a handsome little structure that's dedicated to one of the most visible scars of the apartheid years: an entire zone of the city, demolished between 1966 and 1982 in a violent effort to displace colored and black residents and to whiten, or sanitize, the city center. The museum itself occupies a building on the edge of downtown; the area that it commemorates it still, thirty years later, largely empty and undeveloped. The traces of fear and racism.

Traces aren't always sinister, of course. A few days ago, when the sun was more than a distant memory, Cleo and I drove straight into the late afternoon glare, and she sneezed abruptly - and then said, distinctly, "sun sneeze." It's not a term L. or I ever use, but her nanny Jenn had often referred to sneezes occasioned by sunlight, and so here, thousands of miles away, I saw a trace of the time Cleo spent with her nanny.

That's simply cute, I suppose, but we're realizing that we do have to be on guard, too, because in ToddlerLand a momentary gesture, or concession, can become a Major Precedent. Decisions can leave traces, in other words. And so last night, when Cleo woke up with a runny nose at midnight and decided that she wanted to listen to stories for the rest of the evening, we had a decision to make. Four stories, five stories: okay. And, yes, I'll lie down beside you for a few minutes, in the hopes that you'll find your way back into sleep. But, no, you can't share our bed. And, no, I won't read all night. Not because we don't want to, or can't, a single time - but because once will mean twice, and then become a pattern. And so at 1:07 we said our goodnights and firmly shut Cleo in her bedroom -bringing on a firestorm of a tantrum that lasted exactly forty minutes and then finally ended with her lying down on her own, and sleeping for another four hours.

What's right? What's wrong? Should a traveling First Lady be able to inconvenience so many while remaining so remote, even as she nominally tries to help the local population? When does a toddler's parent say No, and when does she give in? I don't know. But I do know that when Cleo awoke we were all the better rested for our decision to shut the door, and she bore no visible ill will. In fact, we had the liveliest, happiest morning of play we've had in several days.

At the age of two

Photos to come, folks, I promise; for now, we're limited by a cap on our wireless bandwidth, and by a lack of ingenuity that may or may not be connected to Cleo's now-all-too-regular 5:30 a.m. awakenings. For now, though, I just want to brag on my two-year old a little bit - and, in doing so, to duly take my place in a long line of parents and physicians amazed by the capacities of the toddler's mind.

We all know of Mozart's precociousness, for instance, but the first volume of the venerable old Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, from 1817, features further stories of two-year-olds kicking it all extra special like on the keyboard. There was a young English boy last name of Crotch, for instance, who was so affected by music that he would desert his toys and even his meals when he heard a tune in the distance; he apparently then learned to prompt his father to play his favorite tunes by striking the first few notes on the family piano. And at the age of two years and three weeks, averred the local physician, this Crotch boy had taught himself to play the first part of God Save the King on the organ. All this, and he couldn't even talk.

Couldn't talk? Well, that's my opening right there. Because while Cleo still hasn't mastered, at two years and a week, even a note of God Save the King, she's been talking up a storm. And the things that come out are often jarringly relevant, or surprisingly composed. Just now, as I was putting her to bed, I asked her, as I often do, how old she is. Two, she said, as we've taught her to do. That's right, I responded, and how old is daddy? And, in a little voice, as clear as could be: Forty.

I've mentioned my age to her once or twice, but not in the last few days, and I may well have just become the first person ever to act with real delight at being told that they're forty. But, you say, surely she doesn't know what it means. And you're probably right; while the girl can coolly count to ten, forty is just a word, a pair of syllables, to her. Consider, though, this conversation that she and I had on the way home from school yesterday:

Me: Cleo, that’s a nice yellow car next to us. It would be a good car for you, I think: a little car for a little person.

Cleo: Cleo need key drive nice yellow car.

Me Well, yeah, I guess you would need a key to drive it.

Cleo: Cleo turn nice yellow car on go go go.

Admittedly, her syntax is a bit like E.T.'s. But E.T. was, like, hundreds of light years old, right? And could bring flowers back to life, yeah? Well, okay: Cleo can't do that yet. And she can't strike a golf ball cleanly, like a tiny Tiger. But we seem to have reached a point where conversation is no longer merely predictable, or singsongy; it's organic, and she can contribute, as well as repeat. And that's an exciting place to be.

Update

One of the more misleading things about a blog - or a diary, I suppose, or any other sustained correspondence - is that a lapse in entries generally does not imply a lack of activity. Rather, it often implies exactly the opposite: the diarist unable to compose as shells fell in nearby quarters, or the blogger distracted by a sudden and unexpected romance.

I can't blame the three-day silence on anything quite so dramatic, but it has been an eventful few days. Partly due to a momentary rough patch: with L. away for five days, I happened to come down with a worsening flu and a 101-degree temperature, and watched in some awe as Cleo managed to wake up at 5:50, 5:30, and 4:50 on consecutive days. This morning was easily the weirdest : I awoke in the solemn dark to a toddler voice meekly imploring Daddy to come downstairs while finding concurrently that my tee shirt was thoroughly soaked in nightsweat. A combination of coffee, warm milk, and Curious George got us through until sunrise, a full three hours later. (You might think here of Wagner's claim that, after hearing a Beethoven symphony as a young man, he succumbed to a fever, and, when he recovered, found himself a musician. I heard a toddler's quotidian protests at bedtime, became feverish, and awoke to find myself... a father).

But it hasn't all been difficult. Not at all; over the past few days, we've found a good deal to keep us happily busy. The delightfully provincial commuter train that runs along the rocky coast of the Cape peninsula, from fishing town to fishing town, and above tide pools and small strands of sand. The display of clown fish in the aquarium, featuring a hollowed cylinder in the center into which small children can climb, and feel surrounded by the swimming riot of color. A pizzeria that offers both olives and a playground - two of Cleo's staples, at the moment -and a hard cider for Daddy. Slowly, together, we explore the city, wear each other out, and retreat home by 5:30, when the streets and beaches grow dim, and suddenly ominous, and reportedly dangerous.

Call it a fairy tale of sorts, then. If one obeys the weird local logic - home by a certain time, or the car turns into a pumpkin; stick to the main roads, or the car may be dismantled - it's remarkably beautiful. And, of course, it's temporary: the ball never lasts forever. But it's nice to feel healthy enough, again, to enjoy it while it lasts.

Compromises

Really, if you asked me to count up the truly trying aspects of fatherhood thus far, I don't think I'd be able to - and I think L. would agree, in relation to motherhood - offer a response capable of generating much sympathy. Sure, there was the Era of Inconsolable Crying, during Cleo's very first month - but she was so small, and so docile, and so clearly cared for, that even her loudest wails were hardly heart-rending. In the same vein, her frequent cries and sudden needs, in the middle of her first hundred nights, were sometimes disorienting and sometimes exhausting, but they were also par for the course. And while one might add, I suppose, momentary difficulties - the ongoing attempt, on a flight to Los Angeles, to grab the hair of a stranger in the seat in front of us; the silent screams, pregnant with accusations of betrayal, at the doctor's office after a tiny shot - but they've always been only momentary, and hardly insurmountable. Cleo's been, on the whole, an easy kid.

Which is why we're a bit flummoxed at the moment. Now four days into the Experiment with Foreign Daycare, we don't seem to be making any strides. The first morning was more or less what we expected: initial curiosity, and a sudden, tearful breakdown when we told her that we were leaving. Since then, though, we've lost the element of surprise, and the crying is now also anticipatory. She still shows signs of that incredible toddler gameness: she wanders out to the car, climbs in, and sits in her car seat long before we're even ready. But that only heightens the effect of her subsequent request: Daddy Cleo play school? Well, sure, sweetie, I can stay for a few minutes. But then I need to go to work. And that's when her eyes become wet.

Work, you ask? Really? And you're right: in fact, I don't really have to work here; that's L. who's on the job (and currently in Johannesburg, shepherding her group of JHU students on various tours of the city and nearby parks). That said, it's not as though I'm completely aimless; I have a fat Arabic textbook that I'd hoped to master while abroad, and I've got a conference abstract to write by the time we return. And so, as so often in the lives of working parents, it's a question of balancing what I see as my needs against her needs.

Needless to say, attempting such a balancing act is inevitably a losing proposition. Do you give her an hour of company for every one that you give yourself? Or double that ratio? Do you tell yourself that she's fine, and simply try not to worry about it? (One look at the townships can quickly reassure you: her daycare is the lap of luxury by the standards of the urban poor). Or do you simply jettison your own plans, and pledge to spend as much time as possible with her?

The problem is that there's no right answer - especially in response to a crying, upset child. And so you resort to other strategies that can never satisfy you or her, but that must be timeless steps in the dance of parenthood. You tell her, truthfully, that you'll take her to a farm after you pick her up from school - even as you wince at the quiet insinuation that school is to be endured, rather than enjoyed. You ask, meaningfully, if she's made any friends at school - only to find that the mention of the word school elicits a sad sniffle. You think about buying her ridiculous, lavish gifts - but realize that such a tact quickly begets even greater problems. And, of course, you cry after you leave her, and then you wind up blogging about that cry.

What's best? I don't know. But this morning felt like a reasonable, and possible tenable solution: I simply gave myself over to Arabic, as fully as I can. Drills, charts, DVDs, translation, exercises: for three hours, I worked and worked, through five cups of tea and coffee. Kalimat, kalimat, wa kalimat. And then I walked to the library, and to a nearby children's play complex, to scout out possible sites for the future hours that I will get to spend with Cleo.

None of it keeps me from crying, when I think about her. And I'm sure it hasn't prevented any tears on her end, either. But such an approach reminds me, at least, that she's hardly alone. For don't we all have to muster, regularly, courage and energy in approaching our lives? At school, in the library; in Baltimore, in Cape Town: we feel left alone, and then, eventually, we realize that we're no such thing.

Premature thoughts

Might it be permissible, after less than a week in Cape Town, to offer a few thoughts on our new home away from home? Well, hell - given that I began writing about fatherhood before I became a father, it ain't like I'd be ignoring some enshrined precedent. And, anyway, isn't blogging - and its hyperactive younger brother, tweeting - all about instantaneity, gut reactions, and reason be damned? So, friends, here you go: Cape Town is a beautiful woman whom you love even though (or perhaps partly because?) she has been repeatedly unfaithful, and will be unfaithful again. It's a husband who rarely comes home when he promised, and may arrive in a storm of violence, or with the sweetest bouquet of flowers and a lilting love song rendered in a pure tenor. For every sublime view of the mountain above, there is a fresh puddle of shattered car window glass to your side as you walk on a gentle Wednesday morning. The beauty of the developed piers on the waterfront beckons, only to fall to pieces as police roughly escort a handcuffed and scarred man past you and your toddler. The lush parks and innumerable emerald sports grounds are crisply counterbalanced by the bracing poverty of row after row after row of shacks in the township to the north of the superhighway.

And what does this have to do with fatherhood, you ask? Nothing, and everything. As we walked a playground that occupies a meadow beneath a coffee shop, a dignified black man peered at us through the grates of the fence - everything, everything fenced - and handed me a xeroxed and typewritten note describing a plight: want taxi; no money. Had he really waited so long for a ride that he'd had time to type up his predicament, and make copies for distribution? Of course not. But did that matter? Of course, again, not. And so the small joy of a wooden bridge successfully traversed evaporates, its shallow degree of relief nearly invisible against the brasher, harsher chiaroscuro of the city.

Can one be said to be betrayed if the traitor is merely being herself?

Lot people sleep

Cleo, the child psychologists and the how-to books tell us that you won't remember, with any meaningful clarity, a single day of this, your third year. So allow me to step in, and to act as a sort of virtual memory:

On Monday, you went to school for the first time. The daycare center for the University of Cape Town: a series of small concrete rooms and galvanized tin roofs over a modest playground. Your teacher was named Elsie, and she exuded a patience that can only be accrued with years of child care under one's belt. We explained to you, for the fifth or sixth time, that you'd spend several hours in school, and would come get you; we led you about the room, and met some classmates of yours - a lovely young boy named Nils, and a docile, obedient girl named Audrey. We then had to say our goodbyes, and we could hear you crying from the other end of the daycare center. But when we came back, three hours later, that was you sitting with a certain heroic self-composure, eating macaroni at the tiny table as all of your classmates took their early nap. And, later, when I asked you what you thought of school, you said, in a matter-of-fact tone that beautifully recalled the voice of your great-grandmother Betty, "Lot people sleep."

South by southeast

And just like that - and that, and that, and 31 more hours of that - here we are. BWI to Cape Town; Sabina Avenue to Sylvia Street. And L. and I didn't even ask once, folks, for extra mini-bottles of Scotch on the two long haul flights.

But even if we had, it likely would have been a cultured late-evening exercise in enjoyment, and not an act of simple desperation. Because, really, the trip went as well as it probably could have. Cleo was both patient and tired, which makes for a docile toddler, and she slept for the majority of both flights, robbing us of sympathy-generating stories but allowing us to get some rest and to finally get caught up on Hollywood's output over the past two years. And the nine-hour layover in London? A lark, an etude, a chance to explore a random English suburb: we took the Tube six stops to Boston Manor, and soon found ourselves pushing Cleo in a swing next to a charismatic 3-year-old named Toby on one side and a precious cottage serving fruit pies on the other.

Can I sum up the trip, then, in a few words? We were both struck at times, I think, by the utter simplicity with which we used to travel: I faintly remember a time, long ago, when we didn't have to push large carts of luggage, and when a layover in London would have meant a race to the British Museum instead of to a playground, and when our first thoughts on boarding a plane wouldn't have involved assessments of the overhead bins, to see if they could fit a stroller. Yes, yes, we used to travel simply, and selfishly, and happily for all of that. But there was a happiness in this trip, too. In Cleo's sustained delight in a new cast-iron engine that could be rolled over the meal tray of a 747, and in her calm but grammatically accomplished proclamation, near a large window at Heathrow, that "I see plane coming." A different brand of happiness, then, but a real sort, nonetheless.

Along the way, when we weren't pouring orange juice into sippy cups or watching Owen Wilson, we both read, for fun, a bit of Allison Pearson's very sharp and pitch-perfect 2002 jeremiad on modern motherhood, I Don't Know How She Does It. I'll simply say that our trip confirmed the sense of a sentence uttered by the mother of two, on page 31: "Close my eyes and try to imagine a world without Emily and Ben: like a world without music or lightning." Such worlds are not impossible to imagine - and, indeed, both L. and I once loved traveling without children. But recalling such past times can take some effort, when they've been eclipsed by a new, and equally rich, order.