03
Week One
I find myself quoting Shakespeare and Gaiman to Alexander. He’s two days old, but looks at me like he understands what I’m getting at. We have an understanding I think.
In my head I live in a world steeped in the echoes of books I’ve read. I want to tell him about all of them; I want to show him the spectrum.
I listen to classical music in the car now. Yes, it happened that quickly. The baby is only a week old. I don’t like the thought of Alexander being exposed to angry, violent music. Not the modern sort, at least.
Soon after he was born, I had a nightmare about dropping him.
I am not yet comfortable talking about him. Whenever I start to, I stop. Coworkers ask me questions about him and receive short, terse answers. I try to smile like the beaming father that I am. I just can’t be That Guy, the one who shows up at work the day after the delivery of his new child with an album full of photographs and a videotape of the birth, the one who talks endlessly about how amaaaazing his child is and how giiiiiiifted his child is and all that rot that I know, secretly I know, is true about my child. But I don’t want to be That Guy.
So coworkers ask me questions and I have to suppress the instinct to go on and on about how great he is. Humility. Humility is the name of the game. I answer their questions simply, humbly. If some mention of his amazingness slips out, I treat it as though it were nothing. Let others remark among themselves on his many gifts; he doesn’t need me to toot his horn. I know he’s amazing. And I tell him so – and Lori – but no one else.
On the WELL, there is a discussion thread initiated by a woman for the purposes of discussing her son the amazing underaged violinist. I felt put off by her presumption. Where is the balancing point? She knows her son is gifted and so does not seek to censor herself, perhaps; but to create an entire thread devoted to bragging about him and having others comment on how wonderful he is? The thought repulses me.
It is quite possible that I simply lack the proper context.
A big part of it, as well, for me is my own experience growing up playing the violin and viola. I fear for her child. A mother that is so passionate in bragging about her son is not necessarily a mother that pushes her son too hard, too quickly, but isn’t there a higher probability?
I post a message in her thread about my own experiences and how I hope that my son will not take up the violin or viola, and the responses subtly mock it, most often targeting my instructor. The mother goes so far as to say that her son has been fortunate to find such a good teacher. And there’s nothing wrong with that; it all amuses me terribly, though. They do not know who my instructor was because I have not told them.
I know that he is a newborn. I’m well aware of his mental state and the changes that he’s going through in his mental development. Still I occasionally find myself irritated by his irrationality.
I have tried to teach people before. I am not very good at it. I get annoyed easily. Sometimes at work I get a little short with people when trying to explain a programming concept that is perfectly obvious to me but which their background has not prepared them for. In high school I practically did this guy’s Physics labs for a whole semester, just so that he’d stop asking so many “dumb” questions. This concerns me. I have so much that I want to teach him…
At this point, his ability to learn from experience seems mostly undeveloped. He has not yet figured out that my breast will not produce milk, no matter how hard he sucks.
Or perhaps he is just very persistent.
I am very much looking forward to the future. I pray that I am able to guide him without being controlling.
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