All of the honors, status and privileges that pertain

What do you get, I hear you asking, with dreamy visions of pear pine-paneled secret societies and sailing regatta trophies in your mind, as an alumnus of Yale? What privileges pertain? What coded handshakes persist? My friends, I will tell you.

You get occasional letters of solicitation, asking you to add to the school's $6 billion endowment. You get invited to pay $7,000 to join annual alumni trips to the Galapagos. You understand the withering reference to Bridgeport, CT in Franzen's new novel. And you receive - and here's the real, honest-to-goodness perk - the Yale Alumni Magazine. Pick it up, flip past the predictable references to the Whiffenpoofs, and there's almost always, in fact, something rather riveting. Perhaps it's a photo of the now-demolished bar in which you spent, well, enough evenings over the pool table to seriously delay progress on the dissertation. Perhaps it's the story about the 81-year-old alumnus who now audits a full load of classes every term, reminding you from miles away of the sheer pleasure of being a student. Or perhaps, as last night, it's the article about a certain Kevin Olusola '11. Interested? Instead of telling, I'll show: you can see him at work here.

Beatbox and cello? The combination's far from a natural one - it's no granola with yogurt - but it seems to work reasonably well. Or, at least, given my current state of mind it feels right. Living with a one-year-old, though, may have altered my sensibility. Suddenly macaroni and cheese for breakfast seems like a grand idea; a gaudy chartreuse shirt with a saccharine text and pictures of lambs matches a pair of tiny striped pants; dippping crackers in juice makes sense. Toddlers offer, in other words, constant mismatches and weird combinations - and so they put you in the mood for some classically inflected OutKast.

Yale teaches; Cleo teaches. As an alum of both, I'm happy to report that occasionally the lesson is comparable.

Steps

So I think it's fair to say that Cleo can now, for all intents and purposes, walk. Sure, she often wavers and veers, as though she's navigating the deck of a galleon in gale conditions, and she sometimes still extends her tiny hands upwards, refusing to move until she can wrap her fingers around a proffered hand. But she's been tottering about for more several weeks now, and has walked, unassisted, across rooms, playgrounds, sidewalks, and at least one church crypt. Where we were used to a relatively static little playpal, we've now got an avid explorer on our hands.

In turn, I've caught myself, at several moments, feeling as though our job as parents is complete. We'd obviously been looking forward to this moment for several months, and now that it's here, there's a part of me that sees Cleo as complete, as autonomous. You can walk, kid: now get out there and see the world, and please remember to drop us a postcard from time to time.

But while Cleo may be good at dropping some things - she was honing her uh-ohs this morning while raining Crayons onto the dining room floor from a chair - postcards from exotic locales may have to wait. After all, as I'm finding out, the girl's still only one. And even though I feel a strong sense of attainment, on her behalf, she's still developing in a hundred other directions. Steps are nice - but they're only steps to other steps.

Thinking about it today, while she lurched across a wooden tie at the Tot Lot, I concluded that this precise stage of parenting feels like that moment in learning an instrument when a student learns scales for the first time. This white key is a C, this black key a C#; this fret on the second string is an F, and this one's a G. Learn those positions, and the whole instrument seems to snap into focus. But what feels like an accomplishment is also only a beginning. Now that the notes are familiar, it's time to compose melodies.

Tears for fears

Do you ever cry? Cleo, 15 solid months old and a stubborn toddler in training, is something of an expert in the art: today, it was the fact that I wouldn't let her filter all of the sugar in the sugar jar through her tiny hands, as if she were weighing grain, while yesterday it was my dictatorial insistence that we leave the zoo before its door closed and sealed us in with penguins, cheetahs, and lemur. In each case, a torrid protest, accompanied by heartbreaking pearls that course down her little cheeks. By contrast, I'm usually dry of eye: in fact, I can only think of one moment in the past month when I've followed my daughter's lead and let a tear run down my cheek.

It was at the pool, a few weeks back. For the second time this summer, I saw a father of about my age in the pool, with a boy of about 5. All well, I'd thought when I first saw them, as the father slowly guided his son through the mild chaos of water wings, beach balls, shrieking kids, and Pilate-toned moms. But wait: the boy's expression wasn't quite what I expected. His eyes rolling back in his head, mouth hanging open, he seemed vacant, inattentive, absorbed in some infinitely distant reality. In fact, he reminded me of this detail in Raphael's Transfiguration:

I won't diagnose - I don't know how, and it's not my place - but it was clear that the child was not entirely present. Repeatedly, his father lifted the boy's right arm, to prop it up on the side of the pool - only to watch it sag back into the water. Repeatedly, the father spoke, in soft tones, to his son - and yet the son never responded, never looked into his father's eyes. Slowly they began to move again through the water, father holding son, and son limp, unacknowledging, silent.

It's hard enough to parent a fully healthy, fully responsive child. Doing so without the small and precious rewards of an occasional grin, or a voiced 'Dada,' or a task tried, and tried, and finally learned, seems almost incomprehensible. I felt a deep, deep love for the father's patience, and was reminded of Kierkegaard's phrase: the knight of infinite resignation. But what fate decrees that he, and not I, was the one to be resigned? And would I really handle such a challenge with such grace?

The tear suggested perhaps not.

We'll always have Timonium

Cleo, wherever you are when you read this,if you read this - in printed form, perhaps, in an attic, as part of some distant spring cleaning; or online, through the potent search engine of some university library where you're supposed to be writing a junior high essay on John Stuart Mill - wherever you are, I want you to know that on this day, the last day of August, 2010, you were deeply loved by both your mother and your father.

There are many, many things that we enjoy and admire about you: your devil-may-care daring in approaching, and scaling, rocking chairs; the way in which you open your mouth so wide, when we extend a spoonful of hummus; your adorable and flexible collection of four tiny words (woof, hi, uh-oh, and duck). The way you extend your arms towards your crib, near the end of every evening's bedtime liturgy, as if to embrace sleep, and the way in which, when I asked you today where the pool was, as we played in the sandbox, you turned, and pointed straight towards the pool. As if every one-year-old knows that. And perhaps they do: but 39-year-old forget that you do, and we thus feel compelled to write it down, to remember.

But what I really wanted to say, Cleo, was simply thanks for today's 9-hour-date. Date? Really? Well, maybe that's not quite the word - and if it is the word, then I'm a poor date, for I do almost all of the talking. (Although, I should point out, I do foot the bill for everything, too; you've never once offered to pay). But, whatever you call it, on days like today we head out together, and see what this old city can offer us, from bread bowls of black bean soup to the Science Center's water guns. Or, on this 96-degree Tuesday, a visit to the State Fair, in Timonium, where you saw your first llama, spent about 10 minutes watching milk goats being judged, pointed vigorously to the largest, fastest rides on Midway, as though you'd simply take your seat on the roller coaster, and peered long and hard at the ducklings, which we'd seen in books but never in person. And damn if they aren't, some of them, yellow.

But the high point for me, it turned out, was simply taking the light rail there and back. I don't think you'd ever been on a train before, and watching your initial fear - you cried, I'll admit, for a minute or two - melt into something like a cool, studied comfort was wonderful. The trees passed in a green swath; houses looked like toys. We saw fields, a part of a forest, and a lake, and as we sat together you drew cold water from a sippy cup.

So much of your mother's life, and mine, has been in motion, across boundaries, in trains, and buses, and planes. We love the thought that we can share that with you, and that you, a city girl, will pet goats in the county, or watch tiny ducklings hatched from their static pages, before you.

The elusiveness of presence

Cleo and I have found what I consider the perfect playground. In Rodgers Forge, an enclave that's locally famous for its family-centeredness, there's an irregular rectangle, bounded by two small lanes and two rows of brick houses and punctuated by a large grassy area and leafy trees. Near the western end of the rectangle are two large swing sets, a slide, a jungle gym, a generous two-part sandbox (that's filled with more than a dozen communally owned toy dump trucks, in tomato red, and bulldozers, in standard-issue bright yellow), and a towering play set for the 5-and-over crowd. Nicely sited benches - just far enough; just near enough - gather around the playground. And sunlight, on most days, filters through the maple leaves. It reminds me of some of the greatest small-scale urban spaces I've ever seen: of Connecticut town greens; of the main square of Telc, in Bohemia; of the Place Halfaouine, in Tunis.

Still not impressed? Maybe I should have mentioned the Mary Poppins-like figure who moved through the crowd today, passing out her card, in case anyone should need a nanny. Or the ice cream truck that pulled up - almost laughable in the way that it completed the iconic picture - this evening, broadcasting its recorded melodies. Or the fact that the playground even seems to have an ethos of conversation: the neighborhood's website even boasts of the sociability of most of the comers. Sure enough, I've had several pleasant conversations - and, in one, learned that the current gossip on the playground involves the forced removal of a number of toy houses that had once dotted the grounds, in a sort of idyllic inversion of a shantytown.

So, in short: it's great. But, even so, as Cleo usefully erected small pools of mulch on the base of the slide, I looked around - and saw three caretakers on cell phones. No big deal, I suppose, but the image struck me, likely because I'd just heard, on NPR, a story about how the availability of cell phones and e-mail has dramatically changed the experience of Peace Corps volunteers. You used to have no choice but to integrate, remembered a volunteer stationed in Zaire in 1982. But now volunteers Skype with their U.S.-based friends in the evening, or follow a ballgame online, instead of attending the local pig roast. Or, similarly, moms and nannies converse with husbands, or partners, or doctors, over the phone, instead of talking to their children, or to the dad pushing the swing a few steps away. Even in the presence of beautiful play, we seem (and I do mean we: L. texted me while I was there, and I'll admit to reading her note) to want to be, on some level, elsewhere, as well.

But wait. Look at Cleo. There she is, pointing to a bucket swing, kicking excitedly, being put in... and then pointing, within a minute, to the next swing over. And then, moved to that one, yapping about the see saw across the lot, unhappy until she's taken there - at which point, she'll want to move on to the jungle gym.

It's hard, in short, to be completely satisfied with the present. Even given lovely surroundings, we wonder, quickly, how things might lie elsewhere. And, elsewhere, people likely wish they were on a playground, besparkled and lambent.

Around you, everywhere

Today, as Cleo and I marched up Federal Hill for our second Serious Playground Session of the day, it occurred to me that the scattered constellation of play spaces strewn across Baltimore is rather remarkable. Wedged into vacant lots, pressed into city blocks, or designed from the very start as sandy exceptions in a realm of concrete, the playgrounds are a great, unusual gift to the tiniest citizens of the city, and their caretakers.

Can any theory of capitalism really fully explain their ubiquity? Urban designers, public health advocates, and developmental psychologists may all have played a role - but it still seems simply improbable that plastic slides and bucket swings would ever triumph against, say, a skyscraper, or a block of row homes. And yet they do: gentle concessions to play dot the city like the network of Abbasid wells that punctuated the path from Baghdad to Mecca.

Middle Eastern desert oases offer one parallel, then, but so too does the public musical landscape of contemporary America. What I mean is this: as one moves through Baltimore - or, really, any American city or village - one's bound to hear, as one moves, snippets of music, here and there. Today a band performed a sound check in the Pier Six pavilion. A speaker in the infant room at the Maryland Science Center oozed calming electronica. Angry rap declared itself, from a nearby car window, at the intersection of Northern and Falls. And the P.A. system at Whole Foods was tuned to a pop soundtrack.

But that's not all, of course. One may stumble onto local pools of music - but simply by turning on the radio, one can immerse oneself in an entire sea. Yesterday, as I drove Cleo home from a walk and, yes, another spell at a playground, I happened to hear a part of Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 30. A wonderful piece: but even more wonderful, perhaps, that it should be playing, for any ears near a radio, on a Monday in 2010. It was, in a sense, everywhere.

"Oh, all is music! All has been turned to music!" wrote John Hall Wheelock in his poem 'Night Thoughts in Age.' Such a line reminds me, in turn, that, from Cleo's perspective, playgrounds never mark the limits of play. Sure, it's terrific that there are swings in every neighborhood. But, just as the blanket of radio-borne music knows no boundaries, the world of play for a one-year-old is unbounded. One can rock on a rocking chair, or play with a bottle top, with a delight equal to that offered by a slide. All is music. And all, for some, is a playground.

Order in chaos

Today when Cleo - pictured above, right, with her colleague Quentin - awoke from her nap, she promptly unleashed a storm of consonants, vocalizations, and seemingly urgent gibberish that sounded much more like the oratory of an impassioned Ewok than our normal one-year-old roommate.

As I listened, though, and tried to respond, I kept hearing sequences of sounds that seemed, suddenly, meaningful, in a way in which Cleo's sounds have not generally been yet. Cleo does do a nice version of a mild-mannered dog, when asked to, and she's been delighting strangers with a reasonable Hi for a week now. But those are single syllables. So could she really have said, while indicating her desire to be placed in the rocking chair, a mealy mouthed version of Up there? Did I really hear her say something like Aye pat de dat when she petted the cat? Or was I simply in need of a nap, as well?

I'm still not sure. But I am sure - primarily because I've read Ernst Gombrich's Art and Illusion, one of the greatest books of the 20th century - that we tend to seek order in chaos, and to find the familiar in the unfamiliar. Confronted with an enigmatic shape, we think of analogies with more common objects (It looks like an anchor, or a battle axe...). Facing a beached whale for the first time, Baroque draftsmen carefully gave the animal ears, turning lateral fins into forms that we expect on the animals that we see all the time.

I had a roughly comparable experience, in fact, today, when WBJC played, of all things, the Love Theme from Alex North's score to the 1960 film Spartacus. It's been years since I saw that film, and I certainly didn't remember this 3-minute piece - which, it turns out, is part of a celebrated score that marries Hollywood's lush mood to rough period instrumentation and to a surprisingly modernist approach. Played on piano - rather than on strings, as with the florid rerecording that is available on ITunes - it is a spare, touching composition that's well worth a listen. And yet, as I enjoyed it, I found myself comparing it to other works that I did know. The spare sense recalled George Winston. And the main motif certainly brought Bill Conti's effective First Date, from the soundtrack of Rocky, to mind.

But there I go again, right? Faced with something new, we understand it by forcing it into well-worn categories. And confronted with baby talk, perhaps we - or at least that hypercaffeinated minority of us who are relatively new parents - try hard to uncover words, and phrases, and sentences, in the noise. Did Cleo say what I thought she did? She may not have meant to. But flippers can sure look like ears, if you've never seen a whale before.