Parenting and the Piano Man

Rico called me last night. Rico’s a carpenter and is part of a close-knit group of us who were involved in leading a massive wildcat strike back in ’99.

Next week our family’s heading out to visit my mum and brothers back home and so Rico and I got onto talking about parents.
Rico had a ‘strict’ step dad. He made him pick out the branch that he was going to whip him with. If he ran away, his dad would wait till he was in the shower and catch him and whip him there. My dad was cut of a similar cloth. When we were kids he was a police officer and a violent man. Rico and I joked about how different we are as dads, compared to our own dads.
Karen and I are deliberate parents. There are a lot of theories on methods of early parenting out there. From the ‘let them cry’ theory to ‘attachment theory.’ The method of parenting Karen and I use is closer to attachment theory, although we aren’t about to have our child sleep with us in our bed till she’s a teenager.
Every parent should do whatever they think is best and we don’t judge any parent. But that doesn’t stop us having an idea or two about what we think is best.
The ‘let them cry’ theory, of letting babies cry themselves to sleep, in our eyes, is a method that leads to a kid with a weak sense of self and more likely to be insecure. This method seems to be less popular with working class parents and more popular with parents from the management class.
Karen did a review of Oliver James’ book They F*** You Up – How to Survive Family Life, which anyone can pull down at http://bringdownbush.org/h-r/tfyu.htm. To us, the ideas and evidence of this book confirmed that if you teach a child values of solidarity from the day go, that you will raise a stronger child. We’re trying to raise a fighter that can survive the horrors of this capitalist world.
Back to the phone call. Rico is also trying to dump a piano on me. He’s been long irritating his neighbors with the sounds of this instrument that he ‘appropriated’ about 5 years ago. Rico’s piano skills always sounded beautiful in his own head, but to the rest of the world, that’s where the pleasure started and ended.
Finally, the piano got moved out of the front room and out to pasture in his backyard. Rico not only severed its former rank, but further humiliated it by covering the thing with a big blue plastic tarp. I could tell he was wracked with guilt.
Rico tried to convince me, “it’s only been out there 3 days!” As I inched in interest, I could almost hear his pulse rising, “I could put in my truck for you tonight!” he said.
After I hung up, I pictured Rico stepping out the backyard and patting his piano reassuringly. There was some hope.
I’m gonna call back tomorrow and check with his missus on the piano’s dimensions. Karen remembers the piano being the size of a full-sized truck.

Sweetness and the Proverbial Projectile

In less than a minute, Havana put her entire little body into 3 violent heaving vomits. Two of them as she walked in the front door, and one on her way to the bathroom to clean up. She was drained. Some kind of stomach bug.
I tried to reassure her by telling her that she should feel better now. I think she did. Its not possible to take a bullet for your little one when they’re sick. But human empathy can cut like a knife too.
Karen, in her current state, got a bit more nauseous than one would normally be by that particularly evil penetrating smell.
Well, we cleaned Havana up and lay her down on the sofa. A comrade was over who’s visiting from New Orleans where he’s been fighting evictions. Havana listened to our boring conversation and began to drift off in her cozy blanket comfort zone. For nigh on two years she has only ever slept in her crib. For the first time since she’s was a tiny wee bairn she nodded off on the sofa. Now and then we'd all stop talking and look over at her slipping deeper and deeper into sleep.
She lay there. Innocent, shell-shocked and drained. As sweet as life could possibly look.

Love and Construction

An older worker one time told me that any human environment without women would tend to be a bit short of love and decency. All-male gatherings can nurture the worst side of our half of the species.
Today, working on a construction site, is not all roses, but women have made their way in person only negligibly. However, with the advent of the cell phone, for the first time on jobsites, you hear the 3 words once absent from the workday. The most popular way to seal a goodbye on the cell, “I love you.” Hard hats, nails, cuts and bruises and love.
That’s one side to the story. I heard a workmate talk extremely condescendingly to someone on the phone the other day. He was directing someone in a really abusive fashion. Was he talking to a child? I asked if that was his girlfriend he was talking to. He said, “No. My mother.”
What a friggin world to bring a young girl into.
Anyway, while I was perched 6 feet up on my scaffold this morning I got a cell call from Karen. Havana got on and gave me a “happy valentines day.” And a couple of I love yous.

body functions and the climb out of shallow waters

As a fourty four year old I frequently discover new body misfunctions. Something doesn't work the way it used to. Something does something you wouldn't expect it to do. I'm not on my cellphone sharing the celebration of any of these new discoveries. When you're two its different. Except without the cellphone.
Last night on the way out to eat Eritrean food with a friend in the back with our permanent rear-seated passenger, she shared. 3 times. It probably felt pleasurable, as it can when it's not repressed by awkward social etiquette. She also knew it was funny. Two year old funny. Body function funny, but notable. Here on in begins the long climb towards a mature sense of humor and depth. From this shallow recognition of farting begins the long, slow, drawn out, primitive accumulation of humourous material. Now and then she will take a big leap forward towards less shallow jests, but they will be small leaps. And one day we will turn around and she will make a joke that we will laugh at as equals. Perhaps an insight into the complexity and contradictions of life, perhaps something emotionally messy, but she will make it and the "I'm farting" exclamations will fade into a distant memory of more simple world with simpler pleasures.

The little voice and the worm

Another little development is her ‘make my day’ voice. Sometimes I’ll ask her to repeat herself or ask her to
say something louder. She doesn’t do “louder” on command. We know she does louder, but not on command. So instead when I ask for louder, she’s started doing this deeper voice thing instead. She will do it for emphasis too. She goes down an octave that isn’t in concert with her size or age. I get drawn into copying her and then we’re both at it. I think that she thinks that this is her powerful voice. But she’s probably not going to test it outside of the safe place of her home for the near future.
Finally, we have another little sod on the way. 14-weeks today. We refer to it as the “worm.” Havana’s all about kissing the worm in mommy’s belly. She’s very happy that she’s going to be a big sister.

Learning the Scottish Kiss

There have been injuries also this week. I have a browned eye. I never really noticed that children’s craniums are so much larger in proportion to their bodies than adults’ heads. Now, we all like a cuddle.
On the sofa, on the floor, on the bed. But some small people’s body mechanics are less fine tuned than our own. We’ve started to call it “the wrecking ball.”
When you’re in close proximity to it, it can come at you from nowhere. Like all small ones, she is always and forever bumping that little head of hers. We have not helped the process. We try and play down adversity. And naturally it backfired. She thinks nothing of accidentically whacking us with the back of her skull.
During the early 1980s in Britain, I remember the head butt had a big comeback in pub fighting. It was affectionately known as the “Glaswegian (or Scottish) Kiss.” Of course in Glasgow they probably called it something else. I witnessed this harsh fighting method used in many brawls and was once the victim of it. We all wish our children could benefit from our own mistakes. Havana is, I feel, on a clumbsy and unconcious road to developing her Scottish kiss.

Resistance or Curiosity

She woke us in the middle of the night last night. It was a single cry. She had cried out, “Why?” We’d hoped
we weren’t rearing an existentialist. Although she did only cry it out once and then effortlessly fell back into slumber.
Like all of our little species we process stuff at night. Havana hit the ‘why’ stage some time back. It’s not a word that is simply used to express innocent childhood curiosity. It’s also an abbreviation of “why the hell should I do something just because you tell me and just because you’re my parents.” The abbreviated version saves energy, allowing for greater frequency of use. Karen and I, in response, have not yet reduced ourselves to her level by blocking her with the parental monosyllabic expedient, “because.” Possibly, a more worn out, drained, future version of ourselves will succumb to this.

some will say you brought it on yaselves

When her mom asked her to put her shoes on, two-year
old Havana kneeled down, resting on her feet, uttered
the 3 words every parent fears. “I’m on strike!”
Naturally, this was not her first strike. She had been
on strike on many occasions before. It mostly involved
food preference issues or an unwillingness to
cooperate with an innevitable diaper changing. But
this was her first articulation of her method.
In some ways it was a senseless strike that was going
to hurt her own cause. Her parents were not going to
take her to the revered “park” without her shoes on.
The strike collapsed within less than a minute.
However a new tradition had been established and there
was no going back.
Where did the words come from? It’s hard to say.
Perhaps we as parents had brought it on ourselves. We
had, after all, on occasion accused our two-year old
of being “on strike”. But it was never said as an
encouragement. We think it came from a library book we
took out, “Click, Clack, Moo” where the cows go on
strike against Farmer Brown. Public libraries!
It’s behavior like this that cause parents to dread
their child learning to read and write by themselves.

politenesses and social integration

In the last few weeks Havana has been increasingly engaging in politenesses. for a couple of weeks everytime we tried to get her to say "thankyou" by coaxing her with the word "thankyou" she kept saying "your welcome". then she got it. Now its "thank you daddy" for this, "thank you mommy" for that. Its a bit sickening, well, you know nice.
Karen as Havana's primary care giver has helped Havana become this fairly secure little human being, to which I am ever grateful.
So yesterday we had a surreal experience. We're out having breakfast. Karen on one side of the table, Havana high-chaired in the middle and me on the other side. Lil' H motions to karen with one arm, Karen leans in, Havana puts her arm over Karens shoulder and then does the same for me. Then she says, "I love you
big guys!"
It was pretty stunning. Anyway, it was probably the best moment of my life in just a short second. Now I'm getting sickening