Energy

So L. left Baltimore yesterday on a 10-day trip to Capetown, increasing my African readership by one (and likely, if we're being honest, to one), and increasing my dependence on playgrounds by tenfold, as I'm now Cleo's fulltime parent (with some big-time help from grandparents and our nanny...) for a good long stretch. And Cleo, it's increasingly clear, is all about swings. She points vigorously to them when she spots them, sometimes even starting to breathe rapidly as she gets closer - and sometimes she'll even point in the general direction of a swing that she's visited but that may not be in the current line of sight. Want more proof? This afternoon, she even invented a sign for swing: when she signed for help, I asked her , as I usually do, what she wanted. She responded by rocking her upper body back and forth in time.

So we went, and we went, and we went. And, as I pushed her during our second of four stints, I felt the familiar first wave of tiredness wash over me. It's a familiar feeling now: a combination of simple responsibility, of the wobbly frustration that comes from trying to communicate with an infant, and of the realization that one still has hours to go before one sleeps. In this case, about 15 hours: it was 9:15 a.m.

How to generate, then, enough energy to grant this little girl a creative day? Coffee, schmoffee: you know I love the stuff, but in this case I'm talking about something more existential; a more spiritual kick in the pants. And so my mind turned back to something I learned during my first teaching post, in 1992. The details (all-night party in Trebic; Pirates playoff victory on Armed Forces Radio, ending at 4:30 a.m.; consequent lack of lesson plan) don't really matter, but what I realized when I stood, exhausted, before my class has always stuck with me: a teacher can draw energy from the students, instead of always merely projecting energy. Throw a simple spark to teenagers, and it can catch, and turn into a fire that's actually hard to put out. A good question, honestly meant, can be as effective as 15 minutes of all-out lecturing.

I learned that much in 1992. And today I realized - belatedly, no doubt - that such a principle isn't limited to a classroom. The world is made of energy. Cleo arced back and forth; around her, trees arced upwards, the sun burned an arc in the sky, and dogs pranced in long, arcing curves about the park. Tap in, tap in: for a day, I thought, I'll simply try to act as a conduit for such arcs of energy. And here I am, tapping away at the keyboard, Cleo now dreaming on her back.

The Iroquois flautist Tsa'ne Do'se once said, I've read, "I don't 'play' the music, the music 'plays' through me." By the same token, I don't push Cleo, while she swings back and forth. She pushes herself, through me.