Attending

Walking home the other day, I was passed by an SUV driven by a woman who was chatting on her cell phone and, I'd guess, her teenaged son, who was pecking away at the keypad of some electrogadget. How sad, I reflexively thought: a parent and child within two feet of each other, but each temporarily ignoring the other and engaged in a dialogue with absent partners. But then I mulled on it a little longer - walking the three miles home from the library allows that - and started to think that maybe there was an element of grace, of rightness, in the scene as well. After all, each was doing what they wanted, with no apparent friction or resentment. A laissez- faire society, in the cozy confines of a car.

In the days since, the scene's recurred to me a few times. When I'm sitting Cleo, as today, the most basic challenge is to try to read her mood, and to accommodate: a hungry baby needs to be fed, and a wet diaper, if it's not changed, has a way of sublimating into something considerably more grotesque. But as she's growing older (the four-month mark, folks, is just around the corner), there are also moments where reading her mood means respecting her individualism. Today she played with the low-hung rack of toys on her play seat for a good 15 minutes, and although my inclination was to interrupt her - how can anyone fumble with two plastic disks for that long without getting bored? - letting her go turned out to be the best thing I could do. She played happily, quietly, absorbedly.

The point? A simple one. We may want to be perfect parents, always there and always at our child's side. But sometimes being a good parent, it seems, means stepping aside. The space between a mother and child isn't always a cold one; it can also be filled with trust.

Stay the course

Here's a fact that strikes me as rather amazing: in 113 days of life, Cleo has eaten nothing - with the exception of several bottles of formula on day 3, and perhaps a fragment of a leaf that she managed to snag while on a walk - but mother's milk. 16 weeks, folks, and nothing but milk. Add it up, at about 20 oz. per day, and you get roughly 2200 oz. of the stuff - or, to put it differently, L's already produced roughly 34 gallons of milk. That should make you blink.

And yet, it's hardly unusual. The WHO, after all, recommends that infants consume nothing but milk for a full six months. But that's actually a pretty conservative estimate, if you trust some estimates; according to one source, children in many countries are nursed until they are a full four years old, on average. I don't even want to put that in gallons.

Does the process or moving all that milk into Cleo's belly get boring, for parent or child? I think I can say that it doesn't, from the parent's point of view. L. still talks of the power of breastfeeding, and although when I'm on duty I have to use a plastic bottle, it's still a pretty cool experience. In recent days, it's gotten harder, as Cleo enjoys pushing suddenly on the bottle as though she were bench pressing - only to cry when the bottle's suddenly on the floor. But there have also been a few cases in which she's actually managed to hold the bottle herself, for a few seconds - and the much more frequent moments where we simply look at each other are, simply, quite powerful from my point of view.

And from Cleo's point of view? Well, who knows? But the act of nursing never seems to grow repetitive for her. She generally approaches each meal with vigor, with a breathy excitement, instead of with that dreary sense of duty with which so many Americans tuck into their meals. She still gets hungry, during the day, every couple of hours, but she also usually naps between meals, and so the day breaks down into a series of rather diverse units: wake; nurse; play; look; yawn; sleep. This won't hold for ever, of course; eventually, Forrest Gump simply grew tired of running, and eventually Sakyamuni descended from the mountain. There's more, ultimately, than merely milk. But isn't it grand while milk still suffices?

Taking it in

You're Cleo, and you're about three and a half months old now. Over the past few month or so, you've generally stopped clenching your fists - like a miserly midget or a petulant diva throwing a backstage tantrum - and as your hands have melted, you've started to realize that you can use your ten fingers to reach out for objects before you. You feel the smooth plastic of a disk that's suspended above your chair. You bat a stuffed balloon; wrestle a stuffed monkey to a draw. And while you're out walking, when you happen to come before some low-hanging leaves, you feel a few of them, and then abruptly try to stuff one in your mouth. And why not? The world is no longer inchoate and overwhelming; there are patterns, and you know them, and your hands can help you learn even more about them.

Or you're a new dad, three and a half months since your world changed utterly, and you're just now starting to figure out how to balance old interests with new duties. It's Sunday evening and you've got - rare, after 7 p.m. these days - some energy, and the weirdly powerful spider bite that you'd originally diagnosed as tendinitis and which had left your right arm literally 40% weaker than your left has nearly entirely receded. So you go to the gym, and your body enjoys the feel of returning strength, of something other than carrying a baby or typing on the laptop, and as you leave your IPod happens to offer Nikhil Banerjee's Raga Mishra Khamaj. The sitar hums; the tabla weave a dense pattern; the music seems a gossamer grace. Your baby sleeps at home; your wife awaits; there are patterns, and you know them, and you try to take it all in.

Ravaged

Perhaps it made a certain sense that, in a week in which the last two cities in which I've lived witnessed a slaying by samurai sword and a murder victim stuffed in a wall, I picked up my first Richard Price novel. I've heard good things about Price's writing for years: set in gritty, violent urban environments, his work (he wrote Clockers, and several episodes for The Wire, among other things) is relentlessly forceful, but also involves a nuanced attention to contemporary dialogue and life on the margins of society and the law. So, last Monday, I put Cleo in the stroller and wandered into the public library to grab their copy of Samaritan.

A good read, indeed: I steamed through it, from initial assault to final bittersweet irony, in a few days. As advertised, it was taut, intelligent, tough. But there was also a significant surprise awaiting me, as one of the book's primary themes centered about the relationship between a dad and his 12-year-old daughter.

Price is a father of two daughters himself, and he's fully alert to the incredibly complex network of expectations, glances, reluctances, resentments, and joys that can often characterize family relationships. Rather than turn this into an essay on Price's attitudes towards parenting, though, I thought I'd let you off easy, by simply quoting one of my favorite passages. So here you are, on page 101:

"Ray sat in his living room pretending to watch the tape of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that he had made the night before, but really just studying his daughter, cat-curled in front of the TV, the girl a graceful swirl. From her folded-under legs to the long sweep of her spine to the swan arc of her neck to the slope of her profile and the smallish features there, her eyes both mournful and attentive."

Yes, yes: as a father, goals temporarily evaporate or recede in importance. You try to watch one thing, but your eyes and your thoughts consistently return to a new polestar. You try to blog as she sleeps, but you end up watching her sleep.

Reverberations

On the phone this morning, my dad mentioned that he'd been mulling over my assessment of Haydn's string quartets, in which I suggested that they're pleasant, bright works, but without a great deal of depth, or strength. Dad agreed, ultimately, in spirit, but suggested a rewording: that they're works that can be used to foster joy - which, of course, is no small thing.

A few hours after that, while Cleo, her mommy, and her maternal grandparents were up in Havre de Grace visiting relatives, I plunked myself down in the sun and read a few of Max Kozloff's 1960s reviews for The Nation, in preparation for a talk on the subject that I'll be giving in Chicago, in February. And so I was delighted to come across his analysis of Bonnard's paintings, in a 1964 essay:

"Despite the boundless affection engendered by the art of Bonnard and despite the shivers of pleasure it has given countless spectators, no one has ever quite had the nerve to place him among the greatest artists of the twentieth century. It is as if a naked, sensuous joy had in the end to be discounted as vessel for proper genius..."

That's about right, I think. Bonnard is not really Haydn - he's more like a cross between Saint Francis, Matisse, and Marco Bartoli - but, yes, perhaps we all too often overlook joy as an end in itself. Canons and talk of greatness may have a place in certain contexts. But sheer pleasure that stems from art must have a place in others.

Lullabyes

So a couple of weekends ago we had one of L's co-workers over for brunch, and he and his wife were good enough to bring some snappy gifts for Cleo, including a CD entitled A Child's Gift of Lullabyes. Featuring original tunes sung by a certain honey-voiced Bonnie Nichols and other rent-by-the-session crooners, it's a gentle, collection of soft music, and I've been playing it in the mornings while Cleo does her morning calisthenics (on one, squirm, and a two and a three...). And every now and then, in between propping up our sagging daughter (who likes to try to sit upright, but usually succumbs to gravity within four or five second) and trying to come up with a silly face that I haven't tried yet, I catch a few of the lyrics: something about raindrops being nice; a quiet, soothing suggestion that a baby go to sleep; a promise that the next day's fair will be wonderful. When that CD's playing, it seems that we're in the Little House on the Prairie, or on the glorious homestead that's featured in the first few shots of Shane. Nothing can go wrong; cars and mortgage payments don't exist; the world is an essentially generous place. There are no tornadoes in the forecast, and Alan Ladd hasn't yet ridden into the picture.

Such a message is fully appropriate, of course, in a collection of lullabyes. There's a lot of debate, apparently, about the etymological background of the word lullaby, but apparently it first appears in English in the 1500s, and seems to be a simple mash-up of the words lull and bye. Shush, little one, and good night.

But Cleo doesn't fall asleep to these; instead, she vigorously tries to stuff a soft toy monkey that's roughly her size into her mouth. So let's think, for a minute, about the soundtrack that's backing such a violent scene of cannibalism (because eating your favorite stuffed animal does, I'm afraid, have to be considered cannibalistic on some level).

It was the work, largely, of two men, J. Aaron Brown and David Lehman, who - according to the website of their company, Someday Baby, Inc. - distributed the collection of songs out of their novelty store in Nashville in the mid-1980s. Relying on what they called "word of mommy," they saw interest in the album gather momentum, and eventually it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children. And, more than 20 years later, it's still earning 5-star reviews on Amazon, where it's no. 2,214 on the list of best-selling music. That's 8 spots behind the 1990 CD of Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations.

And Bonnie Nichols, who sings to our daughter each morning about Hushabye Street? She's still going, thanks much, and presumably cashing small royalty checks derived from the lullaby CD. Based in Alaska, she's done a number of projects for children, but also composed and performed the soundtrack to "King Season," a TV program about Alaska. In fact, I think that that's her, holding the huge salmon on the program's promotional materials. And if she just leans a little closer to the large fish, and tries to take a ridiculously large bite of it, she'll look just about like Cleo did this very morning.

Kissing a squid

Near the end of his piece on the musician Trent Reznor in this week's New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones quotes the Nine Inch Nails mastermind on the current state of popular sound technology. “Walk into a Best Buy," says Reznor, "and everyone’s obsessed with the highest possible resolution for their TVs. 1080p versus 1080i resolution, hundred-dollar HDMI video cables . . . yet everyone still walks around with those terrible quality white iPod ‘earbuds.’ ”

An interesting point. Granted, his analogy's not quite fair. (After all, we don't walk around with our TVs, but rather often make do, while on the subway, with similarly terrible images on a cellphone screen, or without digital imagery at all.) Still, Reznor's right that consumers often put up with a quality of reproduced sound that is pretty feeble. For a musician who is concerned, as he is, with layering and with the precise qualities of sounds, the thin tones that emerge from earphones are hardly music at all. Listening to them, rather, is something like eating cardboard.

So today's post is dedicated to the idea of experiencing things fully, with all of the senses. While you're driving today, pop a CD into the car stereo, if you've got one, and really let her rip. Pause a moment, during breakfast, to really taste the bread that you've buttered. Or eat a coffee bean. Stare at the cracked course of ants in the sidewalk; wander through the perfumes section of the department store, and try several samples.

And I'll do the same, in the meantime, with Cleo. Most baby books suggest introducing the infant to a range of textures, and smells. Tastes come later, of course, but simply rubbing a baby's hand against silk, and then bark, or touching her feet with a feather, can spur both interest and brain development. So, too, with sounds: a diet of varied noises - barks, breezes, burbling brooks - can prompt curiosity, and a nascent awareness of the world's complexity. So on our walk today I'll press her little feet against the base of an oak tree, and we'll brush our hands against leaves.

That's standard advice, as I said, to parents of babies. But I like the variation on the same theme that was offered by the 12-year-old daughter of a friend who was over for dinner a couple of nights ago. Each year, it turns out, a number of students in her school go on a trip to Costa Rica. She hopes, reasonably, to go this year. And what do you do there? I asked. Well, she said, you walk through forests, and you go to museums. But there is also a marine center, and you have to kiss one of the animals. My friend, she said, kissed a squid.

A squid! My word.

Oh, it wasn't that bad, added our friend's daughter. Other people had to kiss the starfish.