Valentine's week

For most Americans, I think, Valentine's Day is a relatively crisp and finite affair. Maybe you wake up to a surprising breakfast in bed, or are surprised by an Edible Arrangement delivery while managing a spreadsheet at work - or maybe, like many, you go out to dinner at a favorite haunt. Regardless, the holiday's confined; unlike Christmas, which dominates much of a month, or Thanksgiving, which fills airports on the Tuesday before the big Thursday, Valentine's Day is what it proposes to be: a day.

But not at 1202 Sabina! Due to the seemingly infinite and creative generosity of grandparents, we'll have been celebrating V-Day for more than a week by the time that it actually rolls around. It all began last week, when Cleo received a DVD of Valentine-themed videos featuring Angelina, her favorite mouseling ballerina, in the mail (see photo, above). And so for several days we woke up to, among other things, the disarmingly frank confession and honestly touching anthem sung by Marco, a schoolmate of Angelina's, before the big hockey game. It comes dangerously close to stepping over the thin line between treacle and moving emotion, without a trace of redeeming irony or self-consciousness, but of course it's hardly alone in that category (see: Richard Marx), and I've actually come to admire the boy's guilelessness and pluck. And Cleo, of course, adores the whole DVD.

Yesterday, though, Angelina had to take a back seat, as Cleo worked on valentines in school, and then made a lovely heart for me in the evening with the help of her ever-resourceful and angelic former nanny, Jenn, who saved our evening out with some last-minute babysitting. And, on the same day, a package from Chapel Hill arrived, with a number of Valentine-themed kids' books and heart-shaped cookies, to boot. Combine that with cards from her other grandparents, which landed in our mailbox today, and Cleo's amazed. She thought she loved Santa, but Valentine's Day is giving him a real run for his money.

Of course we, as parents, are the indirect beneficiaries of much of this. Happy to have new books in the regular rotation, and delighted to see Cleo cutting, and pasting, and ooh-ing, and ah-ing. And, I should add, even reading, as the following short video will show you. So thanks, to all who thought of us this holiday, and a happy Valentine's Day to you, too.

Another point of view

Sometimes, here at halfstepwholestep, we like to turn the reins over to a guest with a good idea involving, or funny take on, the intersection of fatherhood and music. So turn those speakers on, folks, and sit back and enjoy Dad Life, a sly mash-up of fatherly braggadocio and rap video: you can see it here.

You never know

One of the joys of living with a two-year-old is - well, it's also one of the real challenges of living with a two-year-old. It's the simple fact that you never know exactly what you're going to get in the way of a response, when you ask your little girl or boy what you think is a straightforward question.

Cleo, we've got an hour before we have to pick up Mommy. Would you like to go to a bookstore, or a cafe? I was thinking that we could go to West Virginia and play with my bells. Cleo, would you like to wear this blue sweater, or this red sweater? I would like to wear them both. And on, and on: even the tightest, most clearly spelled out question can be quickly evaded, or altered, or redoubled, through the creative mind of a two-year-old.

As a result, it's always interesting when Cleo announces that she'd like to listen to some music. Okay, I say: can you pick a CD? And she's happy to - but, as she searches the choices that lie within her short arm's reach, it's already a given that she'll somehow ignore the dozens of options that seem appropriate, or appealing, to me, and stumble upon something else. As she did, in fact, a few days ago, when she toddled over to me a few minutes later, with a disc by P.M. Dawn in her hands.

P.M. Dawn, you ask? Exactly: I did, too. Turns out they were a hip-hop duo active in the 1980s and early 1990s; L. bought an album of theirs back in the day, and it had then sat on our rack for years without being played, until Cleo nimbly avoided the Mozart, the Zeppelin, the lovely blues albums and collections of old favorites, and dragged this relic into my view.

But why fight it, right? I meant it when I said, above, that such unexpected turns are a real joy. And so we put it on, and even turned it up, and bobbed to the sample of Spandau Ballet. And long after the music had ended, and Cleo was in bed, I looked the band up, and now I know something new, about an act that I'd never encountered before. In fact, thanks to Wikipedia, I now know, too, that the two members of the band lost, when they were children, their two-year-old sibling in a drowning accident.

You never know what the next moment brings, and so you hold on to this one, and try to enjoy it as fully as possible. Even if it means putting one sweater on over another one.

Back to the present

For most of the past year, the gym where I work out (is that the right term? better, perhaps the gym that I attend, or in which I happen to pass the occasional hour) has played, over its weight room loudspeakers, a single radio station: a satellite station that's dedicated to current pop and alternative hits. And while I've enjoyed learning the basic contours of today's teenager's sonic landscape, it's also been frustrating, in no small measure, because the same station has a rather unfortunate habit of almost never announcing the song's singers, or titles. So while I've heard a good slice of what's currently at the top of the charts, I know almost nothing about it. It's as if I were a tourist in a crowded market in, say, Minsk: I hear a constant stream of sounds, and yet have almost no way of contextualizing them.

Recently, though, some blessed soul managed to switch the radio (whose controls are generally hidden, and locked) to a second station: one that specializes, instead, in Nineties rock. In short, my wheelhouse: so far, over the course of about five hours of exposure, there hasn't been a song I haven't known, and in fact I still own many of the tunes played. (Or perhaps I should put it this way: this morning, in the shower, I found myself wondering why I hadn't yet heard a single song by the Nineties megagroup Live. Four hours later, I went to the gym, and the first song I heard was by Live). And so, all of a sudden, wandering into the weight room is a bit like coming home: it's as though I suddenly stumbled, in the middle of that Minsk market, on a gaggle of my college friends.

Obviously, I'm pleased with the warm nostalgia and evoked memories that this new soundtrack evokes. At the same time, though, I'm also struck by how odd it is that I feel more at home, in a way, in the past, rather than in the present. And perhaps, I suppose, the 19-year-old kids who work out beside me feel exactly the opposite: where they'd been swimming, for the past year, in a familiar pool of top-40 hits, now they're suspended in an antiquated realm of what they likely merely consider classic rock. Pearl Jam's early songs evoke, for me, conversations in parking lots, and mixed tapes, and stories of San Diego. To today's sophomores, though, it's more likely music by a 40something.

And of course Cleo is closer in age - it boggles my mind to write this - to a sophomore than a sophomore is to me. She lives, in other words, in the present - as most youths do, and always have. She's comfortable with her current routine, and any discussion of old patterns - of her favorite baby toys, or songs - evokes more of a blank look than a glean of nostalgic pleasure. Sure, we're all shaped by the past, to an extent. But those of us who love the past, and consider the present something of a foreign territory, are no longer merely young.

But, but... At the same time, I think it's also fair to say that what we all love is the familiar. I smile, while about to lie back on the bench rack, because I know the Cranberries tune that's now on so intimately. And Cleo pads confidently into her school's hall because she knows just what it looks like, and holds. Our points of reference may have been forged in different eras, but we all take comfort from a sense of the known.