спасибо!

Hey, Mother Russia: um, well, this might be a little awkward as you try to elbow your way across another border... but I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks, that is, for a variety of things. For Evgeni Malkin, whose three goals the other night pushed the Penguins into the next round. For granting all of us the right to wear sweatsuits in international air terminals, so that we can wait in comfort and in plush, pastel pinstripes, entirely ready to break into a sprint at any given moment. Thanks for your great novelists, of course, and for Kandinsky, and for Andrei Vlasenko's reaper-thresher, and for the early experiments in electrically-powered locomotives at a rail spur near Sestroretsk, and - well, let's be honest. What I really wanted to thank you for was the 1,194 page views that you've granted this blog over its lifetime. We don't know who you are or why you visit, dear Russian reader - but we did want you to know that you're appreciated.

And I can prove it, by means of a transcript of a conversation that took place, well, not a minute ago:

'Hey, Cleo!'
What?
'Can you name a Russian composer?'
Bach.
'No, Bach was German. Wanna try again?
Tchaikovsky.
'Yes! And what do you know about Russia?'
It's the biggest state in America.

So, you see? We love you and respect you. And whenever we happen to do some petrol cracking or some anthropometric cosmetology, we'll remember that we have you to thank.

Associations

On this rainy morning, as the waters of the Jones Falls flirted with the Kelly Street bridge, Cleo and I drove over to the mill complex to gather ingredients for cookies - and to have a look, over coffee, at the gripping adventures of Odysseus, as interpreted by Hugh Lupton, Daniel Morden, and Christina Balit. Soon enough, we'd left the rain behind, and were instead sailing with the hero's crew as we approached the Sirens. And we listened to Odysseus describe the music that drifted toward him, across the water:

'In the song,' he remembered, 'I heard so many sounds: the beating of a swan's wings, the hiss and drag of sea on sand, the moan of the wind as it blows across the broad face of the world, the rhythm of the passage of the seasons, my wife singing - and all the sounds I heard were in harmony.'

Well, now. Back home, as we mixed our cookie dough, I pulled out a CD by a woman whom the author David Bret once referred to as a 'voluptuous siren':

We stirred, and we listened, and after a couple of arias I asked if Callas' voice reminded Cleo of anything. Remember Odysseus, I asked her, saying that the song of the sirens recalled the sound of water on sand, and the voice of his wife? Does this music call anything to your mind?

Cleo paused, thought - and then, tiny literalist that she is, answered as best she could. 'It reminds me of Beethoven. Of the sopranos, remember?' Well, yes I do: you're thinking of a moment in Beethoven Lives Upstairs, the Classical Kids CD in which a group of tittering divas pass by the great composer. But I'm impressed for other reasons, too. For while Callas wasn't singing Beethoven, she certainly is a soprano. So much, then, for the beating of a swan's wings - but score one for early childhood music education.

And yet, a few minutes later, as our cookies baked and I washed the dishes, something else happened. Callas was singing a passage from La Boheme - tu, tu, piccolo Iddio - and I looked up to see Cleo, hands in the air, posing formally and about to dance. She noticed me looking, and smiled. 'It's like Mulan,' she said, alluding to a Disney film for reasons that still aren't clear to me. 'Can you play it again when it's over?'

Sure we can. All the sounds, after all, were in harmony. And so we did.

Who is?

Who is,' the busy website asks, 'William Onyeabor?' Well, here at halfstep we've done our due diligence - a visit to Wikipedia, folks, and then some! - and we can confidently report that Onyeabor has, over the years, been:

1. A pioneering figure in the history of electronic music, due to his lengthy synthesized compositions, the best known of which were written in Nigeria in the 1970s

2. A crowned high priest in Enugu, and currently the owner of a flour mill

3. A born-again Christian, who refused, for years, to speak of the music he had made earlier in his life

But, more simply still, Onyeabor is the man behind 'Body and Soul,' which is percolating in the air about me as I remember a further set of introductions, made in the car yesterday, after we dropped L. off at work. A little sheepish about my draconian manner in pushing the family out the door, so that I could get to work and do some reading, I began to sing to Cleo, in a self-important bass voice: 'Who am I? I am Dad. I'm the man who make you go, I say c'mon, let's go, let's go.' I waited for a moment, to see what Cleo would do. Would she recognize this as an attempt at conciliatory humor, or see it as just another bossy moment in a bossy morning? And then I heard her little voice, in reply, describing a wavering melody:

'I'm Cleo, and I'm a silly bean, so you will have to cook me!'

And with that, I had an inkling that it was going to be a decent day, timely arrival or not, after all.

Places you might not otherwise go

I'm thinking, this rainy evening, of an assertion that bell hooks made during a round table discussion some years ago. "Love," she said, "will take you places you might not otherwise go."

It sounds like a truism, I suppose, and it could easily have a hundred variant meanings, depending on our current mood, or inclination. But, as Glenn Ligon realized in an engaging review in a recent issue of Artforum, that's part of its appeal: it can be fairly and productively applied, in short, to a range of subjects. Indeed, Ligon used hooks' assertion as a means into Thomas Hirschhorn's much-discussed Gramsci Monument: a ramshackle series of platforms erected in the Forest Hills housing complex in the South Bronx, and a product, Hirschhorn might say, of his love of working with local, marginal communities. Or perhaps Ligon was also thinking of all of the art world denizens who then, out of a love of Hirschhorn and the latest thing, took the train north, well beyond their comfort zone. Indeed, I was one of them, tentatively making my way last August across the busy avenue and then toward the projects, fully aware of my status as an artistic tourist, and outsider.

Or we might speak of longer walks, and in grander and more historical terms. Have you heard, for example, of J.S. Bach's 25-mile walk from Arnstadt to Lübeck? It took place in 1705, when Bach, wanting to spend time with the organist Dietrich Buxtehude ("to comprehend one thing and another about his art," as Bach supposedly put it), spent more than a week making the trip, and then wound up staying nearly three months, so that he was able to hear, as well, a series of Abendmusik concerts that traditionally took place in that town. Love, indeed: Bach had been granted only four weeks' leave by his employer, and was forced to resign his position when he finally did return home.

At times, though, the process by which love leads us to new places may be evident, but rather less dramatic. It was love, I would say, that took me to the aisle of Disney-related dolls in a local Walmart two months ago, out of a genuine curiosity about what Cleo might like, or see. It was love, arguably, that had me at the top of the oily Ferris wheel on the JHU campus yesterday, my little girl wide-eyed beside me. And it was love, I presume, that led L. to download one of the Magic Treehouse books, so that Cleo can now listen to Jack and Annie, and their encounters with ninjas, when we drive. Places we might not otherwise go have somehow, through love, become familiar.

Soundtrack

Ah, Cleo: today was about as easy as they come, and the soundtrack of our day can give you a sense of its contours. You playing gently, softly, delicately with your toys this morning at 6:05, crafting a recipe (I gather) for Arctic Fox as Mom and I slept in, not far from you. The patter of your feet on the hard soil paths of Robert E. Lee Park, where we hiked in about a mile and then helped to assemble a dish of (what you said was) mushroom pie. Your declaration, at the Mount Washington Tavern, that the sausage on your plate was terrific because it tasted like hamburger (which, in any other context, you say you don't enjoy). The creaking joints of the small Ferris wheel that whisked us up into the air above the JHU spring fair (which we visited for a second day in a row), and the appealing melodies of Matt Hutchison, a guitarist and vocalist whom you promptly declared your very favorite singer ('because,' in your words, 'I love his voice and he looks just like Harper's dad'). Later, as Mom went to her book club, Rachmaninoff's (you chuckled heartily at his name) all-night vigil, as we shared a meal of hard-boiled eggs, carrots, cauliflower, and ice cream. And now, as I type, the sounds of you in the bath upstairs, washing a rainbow off your left cheek and, I'd wager, weaving a narrative about a certain mermaid and her father.

'The rhythm is free,' Winfred Douglas wrote long ago, in a program, about the all-night vigil, 'and untrammeled by the usual pattern of equal measures; like harmonized Gregorian song it surges and ebbs according to the meaning of the text and the meaning of the words.' And so, perhaps, with our day: the melody varied, but always fulfilled the demands of the moment.

Bonjour

Yesterday I mentioned this blog to Cleo, reminding her that I put photos of her, and thoughts about her and music, on the computer. And I asked what she thought of that.

'I like music,' she responded, entirely guilelessly. What kind of music do you like? I asked? 'Jazz,' came the reply, in the firmly assertive style of a 4-year-old who deals in things, rather than gray areas.

'And what kind of jazz do you like?' asked L. A pause, and then Cleo answered that, too: 'What a Wonderful World.'

She was thinking of the Louis Armstrong classic - but she might also have been thinking of the day itself - for the song fit. We had awoken to soft blue skies, had some croissants at Bonjour, made our way down to the soccer fields, and then unfolded a picnic among the tulip fields at Sherwood Gardens - and now we were at the JHU spring fair, where magicians competed for the attention of the passels of children with a large inflated moon bounce. And so while we didn't hear any jazz - a country song carried, from a distance, and a banjo player explained the origins of that instrument in West Africa - Cleo's answer felt entirely appropriate. In the moment, for a few moments at least: a wonderful world, indeed.

Overlays

This is a picture of Cleo on a swing, taken yesterday. But to me, it's also a palimpsest: a visual layering of moments. And in two quick paragraphs, I'll try to explain why.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. It's a well-known piece of music that was arranged in 1936 and then first performed in 1938. But it is also, one could argue, a composition that has acquired, over the decades, a range of associations and inflections that could never have been foreseen by Barber. For instance, it was broadcast over the radio in 1945 to accompany the news of the death of Franklin Roosevelt. It was played at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco. It was played during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics, in Vancouver - only hours before the fatal crash of the luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. Or perhaps you remember it from The Elephant Man, or the climactic scene of Platoon - or, more recently, from Michael Moore's Sicko. Regardless, these accrued histories now coat the piece almost like a rich patina. The work, heard now, bears its past like a residue.

And so, in my mind, does that swing. I first saw it, I think, in the fall of 2011, at a Bolton Hill Nursery picnic. Cleo was a Bluebird, and thus not yet allowed to use the adjacent playground equipment. And the swing, which we called a big girl swing, was still daunting: Cleo gravitated instead to the safer, more familiar bucket swings. Over time, though, she and her friends began to test their skills on the big swings, too: in their second year at the school, several of them developed a move in which they ran a short distance and then fell on the swing seat with their belly, arcing into space like, say, a horse borne by a sling danging from a helicopter. In time, though, 2013 became 2014, and now the kids were climbing up into the swings, and sitting upright, and pumping their legs: in short, they were swinging. With casual smiles on their faces.

So she swings. Barber's music plays on my computer speakers. And I, in the present, am gently led through a series of overlaid associations: a series of silts that form the delta of a river we observe, but can never fully fathom.

Not pink

So is it all smiles, then? All bright sun, cherry blossoms, and major chords?

No. It's not. And you know it's not. Maybe you've come across, for instance, The 99 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music. You know from the Swan Lake suite; you know Barber's Adagio for Strings. You know that it can be hard.

And I learned that again yesterday, when Cleo and I, after a good romp at the green space, sat down to play a game of princess jewelry. It starts simply enough, as players select their colored glass slipper, and so when Cleo said that she wanted blue, I followed suit: I'll take pink, I said. Only to hear her reverse course, and say that she now wanted to be pink.

Now, this might sound like the dullest of parental narratives: the mercurial 4-year-old; the pink slipper. But in fact Cleo's typically rather decisive, and she generally respects other people's wishes, and so I was taken aback. And, honestly, I did kind of want to be pink. So I refused to give in. I said no. And I watched the tears begin to flow.

After a minute or so, it was clear that she was crying as much out of embarrassment as anything else. But I didn't feel like giving in, and neither did she, and so began to excuse myself, and to suggest something else - only to see the sobs redouble. So, finally, I proffered a compromise: should we both be other colors? And that evinced a subtle nod, as her shoulders shook.

So we sat down to play, Cleo still sniffling, and recovering. I waited, and, after a generous pause, nodded toward the spinner and said, "Do you want me to go?" But she, head down, missed my gesture, and thought that I was threatening to leave - which once again plunged her into desperate tears, now spurred as much by the painfully obvious fact that she didn't want to be alone, even as I was the very reason for her unhappiness.

Well. Soon enough - within two minutes, in fact - we were back on board. I drew the ominous clock tower, earned a few small laughs with a silly suggestion that I wear it like a hat, and soon we were back on board. But, for several minutes, we'd been torn apart.

And that rift, that distance, is still with me as I write this. Partly because of its unusually potent sadness. But also, I have to say, because of the way that it threw all of the lighter moments - and there are many of those, folks - into higher relief.

There may be 99 especially dark pieces of classical music. But there are, arguably, hundreds and hundreds of moments of sublime beauty.

Welcome to this place

If you're of a certain age (and, probably, a certain gender: this one's for the boys, primarily), there might be, tucked away somewhere on a CD rack or shelf, a copy of Creed's Human Clay. You likely haven't played it in a while, and you might even feel a vague embarrassment, now, at owning it. But you needn't: in its day, it was one of the top-selling albums of the late 20th century, and as of 2012 it had sold a whopping 11.5 million copies. In other words, it's not only on your CD rack.

But whether you own it or not, you might recall the album's most popular ballad, an uplifting tune called 'With Arms Wide Open.' Again, it was hardly an obscure song: it won a Grammy, in fact, for Best Rock Song. But 15 years is a long time, and it's not like Creed is on the radio these days, so we thought we might refresh your memory by pointing to one passage in particular. Scott Stapp, the lead singer, is singing about his first child's imminent birth, and he's imagining the ways in which he might greet his little boy:

With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything

Well, then. Stapp's growling vocal style can feel, nowadays, a bit embarrassing - but in its day, it was completely typical. And, against such a common ground, the song thus stood out primarily for its lyrical sensitivity, rather than its superficial aggression. Show you everything? We were more used to Nirvana preaching a sort of numb rage, and suddenly we were being prompted to think about children and their needs.

I'm not sure what Stapp had in mind, when he sang those lines. But I will agree with him, that one of the most fundamental joys, and challenges, of parenthood is that simple, amazing ability - or, better, responsibility? - that we have to teach our children. At times, it's a simple pleasure. (This, child, is gravity). At others, it can be complicated. Today, for instance, I found myself reading 1 Samuel in order to teach Cleo the story of David and Goliath - and learning, in the process, that it's a remarkably complex and allusive narrative. (And violent: as she put it, after we read that and the account of the birth of Moses, "A lot of people die in these stories").

And then there are the times when it feels almost transcendent. Today, with Cleo out of school for the day, I figured I would take her down to the local elementary school, to give her a look at what she'll experience in the fall. As we neared the school, her initial excitement gave way to nervousness, and when we ran into a neighbor her face was firmly buried in my shoulder. Slowly, though, she opened, like the tulips in our front yard, and soon we were looking at the various pieces of artwork visible in the windows. You don't need to be ready for it quite yet, I told her - but in about four months, you'll know a lot more about this place than I do. And at that, she smiled.

Welcome, Cleo, to this place, and that. I'll never be able to teach you everything, but it's been a blast trying to show you at least a sliver of what's out there.

Singin' sweet songs

So where do you listen to music? In the living room? In bed, on Sunday evening? Is it in the car, as you ease into the passing lane on Route 405? Or do you perhaps wear earbuds, as you walk to work?

For us, it seems to be a little bit of everywhere - and so it occurs to me that one could more or less draft an account of our days by describing the music that we heard, and the places in which we heard it. That tinny percussive pop, coming from nearby headphones? That was one of the members of the Saint Timothy's girls' golf team, disembarking from their team van at Fox Hollow the other day, as Cleo and I tried some putting on the practice green. The smooth, almost smarmily self-confident lines of harmony? A Music Together CD that Cleo and I found near the bottom of the glove compartment, as we drove from Oregon Ridge back toward the city. Bob Marley, singing 'Three Little Birds'? That was at a Starbucks, where Cleo and I were playing a drawn version of I Spy: she renders something in the café, and I try to guess what it is - and then we swap roles.

Inevitably, though place folds into place. The song that you hear one moment sticks with you, until its displaced - and thus temporarily colors your subsequent surroundings. Which is what happened when we got home and Cleo, delightfully filthy from hours on the playground, climbed into a warm bath. I could hear her crafting her usual mermaid narratives (her tiny Ariel doll turns out to be a very fertile prop) as I read downstairs. And then, suddenly and clearly, she sang, 'Every little thing. Gonna be all right." I picked my head up, and responded: 'Don't worry. About a thing." And suddenly we were both at one and nowhere: suspended once again in a call-and-response that had begun in a Starbucks but had now assumed a whole new form. But no worries: as she said, every little thing was all right.

Where does one listen to music? We may have favorite places, but those places seem to be more like entry points, from which ripples begin to emanate.

All together now

No school yesterday on Easter Monday, but the morning dawned gentle and full of promise, and so I put on some flip-flops and packed some almonds and an apple, and Cleo and I drove north, into the county. While waiting for the car during its 80,000-mile tune-up, we read some bunny-related books, played a game of Mummy's Treasure (another relatively simple win for Cleo, who shared one of her secrets: the jugs, she says, are easier to roll than the tea cups), and shared a vanilla yogurt - and then it was off to Oregon Ridge and its ample playground.

Could there have been a better playground day? I don't think so. The sun was strong but never hot, and the playground was lively but never oppressively full. And yet, for the first half hour or so, Cleo simply sat near me, as I sat on a bench and read. She snacked a little; she gazed longingly toward the swings, which were constantly occupied; she invented small games in the grass. But when I offered to introduce her to one of the packs of children who careened about us (one in full superhero regalia), I received only desultory shakes of the head. So after a while I put my book down, and engaged in one of the most basic duties of a single parent: I became a play partner, a slow monster who tottered after my only child as she shrieked and evaded my clumsy claws.

Until, at least, a swing opened up. Cleo noticed immediately, and within a few seconds was curled up on the rubber seat, having claimed her place and waiting for a good starting push. Delighted to see her happy, I pushed and pushed, registering the weight of her small body and simply watching the tide of children ebb and flow. Cleo, meanwhile, began to work through her songbook, belting out the two songs from Frozen that she's known for a few months now. And then something neat happened: a 6-year-old on the swing adjacent to ours began to listen - and then to sing, as well, joining Cleo in a vigorous two-person Disney recital.

In Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals, Arlo Guthrie thinks about the curious power of group singing. "There's a feeling of American unity," he says, "and maybe even global unity in singing songs that mean different things to different people. Allowing the guy next to you to have his meaning and you're singing along to your own."

And then there's Dad, of course, who listens enchanted, as the two melodies occasionally merge - until the two girls climb down from their swings, and trot off together to a balance beam, where they begin to invent games à deux. "As far as I can tell," Guthrie observed, "the real practical benefit of seeing people sing together is if they can learn to sing together they can probably learn to do other things together." Indeed. Play, girls, play.

It's complicated

I spent part of Friday reading Danah Boyd's new It's Complicated, a rather optimistic assessment of the place of social media in the lives of American teens. One thesis: teens want to explore, and to experiment with a public life - but malls are often now off limits. So they turn to Facebook. Another thesis: social media, like any media, can be used toward positive or negative ends. Certainly, Boyd manages to set herself apart from the dark, worried views of Sherry Turkle. But ultimately it's her intentionally trite title, drawn from teenaged slang, that really remains in my ears. Because you know what? It is complicated. In fact, it's all complicated.

For instance, the other day we were about to set out on our little triangular jaunt across a slice of Baltimore - down Roland to JHU; past the large paper moon and over the river to the nursery; down the hill to my parking to - when I grabbed, Achtung Baby, one of U2's greatest albums and now (gulp) a 20-year-old CD. And suddenly L. and I were back in the early 1990s, singing and humming along, transported to an era long before Facebook. But, soon enough, we surfaced again, returning to 2014, and began to chat briefly about plans for the fall; I think that we were telling Cleo, once again, about her new school, and thinking about how our schedule and drives might be different then. And so there we were, on a handsome Friday morning, almost simultaneously living in the past and the future.

At some point, I'm sure, we'll be vexed by our teenaged daughter's use of some app whose purposes we cannot even imagine right now (and may not be able to, then). Why does she spend, we'll wonder, so much time on that, when it's a beautiful day out? And then, perhaps, I'll remember this entry, and recall that we, too, once surfed from memory to hypothetical, momentarily blithe to the day outside - and then even took the time to open a laptop and type up our thoughts about that virtual experience.

So, Cleo, you're not entirely excused, not yet. But I understand, at least in part. It's complicated, no?

I guess

It's hard - isn't it? - to reflect on existence. Cleo and the Redbirds have been doing a bit of it lately, in mulling over big questions (Can something that is invisible exist? Does love exist?) - and, as you can see in the photo above, they've found that a pot of mint tea can help in tackling such profound issues.

But so, too, can some well-chosen qualifiers. Professional philosophers may aim, of course, at a sort of crystalline clarity in their writing. But most of us, when speaking about abstract issues, tend to turn towards softening words - maybe; might; perhaps - in order, I suppose, to distance ourselves from an artificial confidence, or an unappealing assertiveness. Consider, for instance, a recent interview by the 405 with Tycho, an electronic musician. In it, he was asked why he doesn't tend to listen to electronic music by other composers. His answer? Well, it began like this:

"In general I guess I'm just exposed to other kinds of music more often. Maybe it's that my friends generally don't listen to electronic music..." Look at all of those qualifiers! In general; I guess; Maybe: clearly, Tycho is hedging his bets. Again, speaking about something as ethereal as artistic motivation can be hard, and such terms work to indicate the nebulous fuzziness of the topic.

Cleo hasn't been interviewed by an online magazine, but the other day I did run a few questions by her after I lost yet another game of Mummy's Treasure. And, lo and behold: she too speaks in highly qualified terms. Specifically, our conversation went like this:

Me: "Why do you always beat me at Mummy's Treasure?"
Cleo: "I guess I just know how to play more better than you."
Me: "Why do we play games?"
Cleo: "Because I just like to play games, I guess."
Me: "Why do people play sports?"
Cleo: "I guess so they get stronger."
Me: "And what is a sport?"
Cleo: "It's something that you play, like soccer."

More better than me? It might seem that she's rubbing it in: the girl can't even create a correct adverb, but she really does win, on the level, at least 75% of our games of Mummy's Treasure. And yet, I see in her answers a wise series of hesitations, as well. I guess, again and again: years ago, Wittgenstein noted that it's almost impossible to define, with any concrete exactness, game. Instead, he suggested, we rely on something like family resemblances: some games have boards, others have balls, and so on, and they all overlap in part, and we thus make do with a category that is far from precise but that more or less serves its broad purposes. In short, when we use language we don't always denote with precision; we also guess. And always have, mint tea or no.

All's well

I couldn't quite explain it to myself, even as I scrolled through lists of streaming music last week - but I had a powerful, if vague, sense of the sorts of sounds I wanted to hear. And when I found Ledward Kaapana's enchanting Kiho 'Alu, a brief album of tunes played on a Hawaiian slack key guitar, I knew that I'd found jsut what I was looking for. Sure, the weather outside was still mercurial, and, sure, there was a stack of papers and quizzes waiting their turn to be graded. But with Kaapana on my little speakers, my world seemed to take a deep breath, and relax. In fact, I wouldn't have been very surprised if a tropical drink had suddenly materialized on my desk.

The tropical drink never did take shape, but the past few days were, in other ways, delightfully tropical. There we were, running through passing drills at soccer practice on an absolutely sublime Saturday morning.
There we were, wearing flip-flops and turning the garden soil; there we were, watching several of Cleo's classmates stripping their shirts off in the heat of play at the big playground, for James' fifth birthday party. And there we were, waking up on a balmy Sunday morning, windows thrown open, the day absolutely full of promise.

Music, perhaps, cannot by itself effect such weather. But it can embody the spirit, I think, of such a weekend And so now, as I play Kaapana's album in my office and finish reading the last student paper, it no longer merely promises an end to the winter; it also feels tinged with the happiness of a recent weekend well spent.

Trading places

There's a nicely written piece by Siva Vaidhyanathan in the current Bookforum in which she thinks at some length about the place of graduate school in modern American life, and about the notion of an academic calling. Along the way, she remembers a moment when she was a student at the University of Texas, and a lecturer asked if the students knew any Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. She raised her hand, and when she was called on, broke into song - only to listen to the professor sing, in turn, the next couplet. As she remembers it, her classmates were bemused, or even embarrassed, at this impromptu display of nerdy affection for Broadway. But for Vaidhyanathan, it was a critical moment: indeed, as she puts it, "That's when I first began to recognize my calling as a scholar of the humanities." The student saw the professor become, momentarily, a peer - and although the two were divided by age and station, she recognized that she could, in time, occupy his place. And so she did.

Yesterday, on a radiant spring day, Cleo and I spent an hour at Meadowood park, trying out the once-familiar swings and ranging over the playground equipment. We hadn't been there in months, and so the visit put me in a naturally nostalgic mood; I remembered trying to kick some field goals there at Thanksgiving, with L. and Uncle Mike, and I remembered a trip there with Grandma, Grandpa, and Cleo on a cold fall day several years ago. But I also remembered one of my first visits to the park: it was probably 2010, when Cleo was around 1, and I recall doting on her as she sat, almost inert, in a bucket swing. I chatted; I might have dangled my keys; I think I gently pinched her toes. Anything, in short, to entertain her, and myself. And I remember, too, that we were joined by an older man, likely a grandfather, who pushed his 4-year-old daughter in relative silence. His girl was happy in the mere act, and needed no distraction. And so he simply pushed, and made occasional conversation with me, and watched as I acted like a deranged ape before my toddler.

Well, yesterday we were the 4-year-old, and we were surrounded by babies. And, sure enough, the moms who accompanied their kids were intensely active, chattering with their children, attending to their jackets, and constantly making sure that they were engaged. By contrast, I had little to do once I got Cleo moving; as soon as she was swinging, she broke into song, and simply enjoyed the day. So I pushed, and stood, and struck up a couple of informal conversations with the other parents, when they weren't consumed with their little ones.

In short, I had become the figure I'd met three or four years ago. And Cleo, once a baby, had become the relatively older foil to the babies who rocked in their swings to her right. None of this, of course, is a revelation. Time passes; we grow into new roles. But, still: it can be powerful to sense that one has a calling, or at least a direction. Whether you sing show tunes or Disney numbers along the way, you evolve - and, as you do, you get a chance to experience from the inside what you once only saw from the outside.

Familiar strangers

This evening I came across a website developed by Pony Hill, the man behind Pony & the Pickups. Ever hear of 'em? No, me neither - but, given that they do play a song called 'Carolina Girl,' they can't be that far from my heart. (That said, a second tune on the same album, 'Cocaine & B*t@ches,' does imply that we may have our differences, as well). Anyway, Pony's close to completing a new album, and two months ago he noted that he's thus in the process of selecting a cover photograph. And that, in turn, quickly led to an important observation: that there are really only six sorts of photographs from which to choose (at least, for a country-inflected rock act like the Pickups). Specifically, those choices include:

1. The band sitting on an old car
2. The band holding instruments
3. The band standing in front of an old building
4. The band in front of a stone or wooden wall
5. The band staring off into space at various angles
6. The band walking toward the camera

Rings all too true, no? To be sure, those six genres cover a huge number of album covers. But in fact I'm tempted to stretch the observation, and to note that they cover a lot of other photos, as well. For instance, while in San Antonio a few weeks ago, L. and I took Cleo to the Alamo. And, now that our girl's nearly five, we figured we could ask her to take a few shots of us for the scrapbook. Given the location, we lined up a classic number 3: that is, we were standing in front of an old building. And Cleo, unsteadily holding what suddenly seemed like a massive camera in her tiny hands, prompted us to say cheese and... took the shot above. Or, to put it more accurately, asked us to say cheese and then waited about six seconds before shooting the picture, as we began to stroll back toward her.

The result was unexpected: instead of getting the posed picture that we'd planned, we got something quite different: a sense, I suppose, of what we look like to Cleo, as we approach her. (And it's nice to know that we do smile as we do so, even when we don't think we're being photographed). But look: we also got, in the process, a nice number 6: the band, that is, walking toward the camera.

We'll never be, I suppose, on an album cover. But, still, the photo touches me. For one thing, it's an all-too-rare piece of proof that L. and I exist, in our own right, as well; that is, it's a slight corrective to the fact that Cleo has been in roughly 98% of the pictures we've taken since 2009. But I like it, too, because of the way that Cleo is still also present: in the background, as photographer, and in our eyes, as we approach her. It's an image that reverses my sense of self, and that gives me a view of her own experience. And that reminds me, then, of a song by Pony & the Pickups. It's a tune called 'Familiar Stranger.'

Divertimento

Hey. Um, sorry about that. More than a week, you say? Almost two? Again, I apologize. Life, well, you know. Busy day, busy people. But still: you deserve better. And so I'll lay my stack of grading to one side, and will get down to business - to the business, that is, of remembering this past Saturday afternoon, when Cleo and I drove down to Old Town Alexandria beneath a pleasant spring sun.

We had plans to meet old friends in the evening, but that was hours away, and so we parked the car and wandered down to the trolley stop. Cleo soon scored, in the weirdly magnetic manner of most 4-year-olds, a balloon, and it danced a jagged rhythm above her wrist as we rode down King Street. On the trolley, I flipped through a tourist brochure, and noticed a two-for-one ice cream ad, and suddenly we had a plan, in the shape of two small cups of Mint Chocolate Chunk.

Once we'd had our fill, and then some, we walked outside, and immediately heard bagpipes. A half minute's walk brought us to an assembly of about 20 pipers, who then marched to a nearby green, where we found an entire Scottish festival, complete with clan booths and a main stage. And all the while the pipers kept it up, pausing only to introduce the next song - or, in a further happy turn, five young female dancers.

Cleo was deeply interested; indeed, when the dancers appeared, she sprinted across the green so that we would have a better viewing angle. And there we sat, for nearly an hour, through a full slate of tunes and several flings, watching the drum major lift and then plunge his staff, and listening to the drones before the company finally receded. The large wet circle on the rear of my pants was thus not merely a residue to the prior evening' rain; it was also in part a testimony to our sheer enjoyment of the pageantry.

Ears full, tummies full, we thought we'd push our luck, and ducked into a nearby bike shop to ask if they might rent adult bikes with attached children's seats. No luck. But that, in turn, only spurred us to begin walking back to the trolley - and to find, along the way, a convex mirror that seemed just the spot for a quick selfie. Which you can see below - because, again, we never meant to hide anything from you. It's just that sometimes life gets in the way of blogging about life.