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a few brief reflections
Jul. 13th, 2015 03:23 pmOne thing I love about FB is that a causal post or picture flung up by a friend can trigger a comment which makes me pause and reflect on things a bit. Today's instance was a picture of a parent duck telling a child duck "You gotta flush AND wash your hands" with the caption: "I used to be cool and do cool things. Now I argue with a smaller version of myself about how to use the toilet". My comment:
It was really quite eerie, because it was just a brief moment but I was wholly transported back to my own bedroom, age 7 or 8, blithely composing, and then recording, my musical debut, "Drums in the Halls of Death". (It was a master of musical economy, composed for voice + two instruments, the drum (the melody line) and the guitar (the percussion).)
One of the strangest parts about being a parent is realizing that you know more about this other person than anyone else in the world -- better than you know your parents, better than you know your siblings, better than you know your partner. You've been there since day one, and not only have you had more opportunity to learn about this person than anyone else, your being there has helped shaped that person. That person responds in the way she does because of the way you have responded to her. She has been closer to you than anyone else has ever been in the most literal sense of the term, and I am fully convinced that one reason why Gwen was so late in saying "mom" was that she simply didn't have a need to differentiate me from her for a very long time. I still feel as if she's an extension of me, when writing here or in my paper diary, when I only need to say "she" or "her", and I have no need to name her. (It's rather like how I noticed after getting married that I'd refer to "him" without ever having named Joel, or even indicated explicitly to the person I'm talking to that I'm married). For as little as she looked like me when she was younger, there were occasional uncanny moments when there was no doubt that she's my child, through and through. It is, a little bit, like watching yourself grow up all over again, but -- in the usual paradox of time travel -- to be unable to benefit from any of the wisdom you gained growing up the first time. I can only try.
But what is so marvelously strange about all of this is how nevertheless she is so wholly distinct and inscrutable. There is an entire other mind in that separate appendage of mine, and I only get the barest of peaks into it. As she gets older, I see more, and the more I see the more alien and foreign she is. The paradox of parenting is that the person I know most well in the world, the one I am closest to, is the one that I will never, ever be able to know. It is marvelous, and awesome, and awful.
I had to apologize to Joel yesterday. Gwen had put on some headphones, thereby cranking up the volume at which she was belting out off-key songs by several notches, and I suddenly had a very vivid flashback to my own childhood. I apologized, because I'm fairly certain that the "sing loudly and off-key" genes were contributed wholly by me. It is quite eerie having something so similar to me and so close to me and yet so wholly independent and inscrutable.
It was really quite eerie, because it was just a brief moment but I was wholly transported back to my own bedroom, age 7 or 8, blithely composing, and then recording, my musical debut, "Drums in the Halls of Death". (It was a master of musical economy, composed for voice + two instruments, the drum (the melody line) and the guitar (the percussion).)
One of the strangest parts about being a parent is realizing that you know more about this other person than anyone else in the world -- better than you know your parents, better than you know your siblings, better than you know your partner. You've been there since day one, and not only have you had more opportunity to learn about this person than anyone else, your being there has helped shaped that person. That person responds in the way she does because of the way you have responded to her. She has been closer to you than anyone else has ever been in the most literal sense of the term, and I am fully convinced that one reason why Gwen was so late in saying "mom" was that she simply didn't have a need to differentiate me from her for a very long time. I still feel as if she's an extension of me, when writing here or in my paper diary, when I only need to say "she" or "her", and I have no need to name her. (It's rather like how I noticed after getting married that I'd refer to "him" without ever having named Joel, or even indicated explicitly to the person I'm talking to that I'm married). For as little as she looked like me when she was younger, there were occasional uncanny moments when there was no doubt that she's my child, through and through. It is, a little bit, like watching yourself grow up all over again, but -- in the usual paradox of time travel -- to be unable to benefit from any of the wisdom you gained growing up the first time. I can only try.
But what is so marvelously strange about all of this is how nevertheless she is so wholly distinct and inscrutable. There is an entire other mind in that separate appendage of mine, and I only get the barest of peaks into it. As she gets older, I see more, and the more I see the more alien and foreign she is. The paradox of parenting is that the person I know most well in the world, the one I am closest to, is the one that I will never, ever be able to know. It is marvelous, and awesome, and awful.
