Freedom

So, no, I can't say I've read all of James Masterton's Psychotherapy of the Borderline Adult. In fact, I can't even claim to have read more than a fraction of a page of it. But, still, as I flipped through it a passage stood out to me. On page 222, a frustrated male, wondering about his sexual identity, suddenly remarks that "The only time I feel free is when I'm cooking or playing the saxophone."

Which is interesting for all sorts of reasons, I suppose, but of course what I want to point to here is the sense that playing music can make one feel liberated. On a general level, that's hardly a rare sensation. And in fact it's not even unique in its details; you could actually build a small database of men who have claimed to have felt that sense of freedom while playing on the sax. (For instance, in Half and Half, a series of essays by bi-racial authors, James McBride asserts that "Music is my escape, because when I pick up the saxophone and play, the horn doesn't care what color am. Whatever's inside comes out, and I feel free.").

So to each his own. For Cleo's part, it's not necessarily the sax that does it, but rather a good romp. And on a recent cold Wednesday, I took her to Kiddie Crusoe, an indoor playground in Timonium that features a range of environments and a full collection of inflatable bounce castles and slides. And no doubt: Cleo was ready for it. After about an hour trying on princess dresses and scrambling through tunnels, she came up to me, and said: "I feel like a servant girl that has just been freed and she is playing on the playground."

In other words, she felt free - and didn't even need a saxophone. But, truth be told, she did bake a chocolate cake with her babysitter the very next evening. Romping, playing the sax, or cooking: freedom may come in many forms, but it inevitably tastes delicious.