As Memory Begins

I have been conscious of the curtain on my past prior to age five, a stage of my life that is murky and staged among the relics of fading Kodachrome images and even black and whites, the most vivid being of me bathing in a tin washtub at my grandparents' in Quebec.  Even the first year of school in 1972, at age 5 1/2, is vague, but the period around the start has long marked the distinction between remembered and unknown.  There are vague memories - one of toddling lost in an airport or train station - but that among others may be from the realm of dreams rather than remembered experience.

With Gabriel now at that cusp - where memories he will be retained into adulthood - I have become more conscious that the time we spend together is actually getting stored away in his thoughts to leave more lasting memories. These current moments are not going to be buried in his subconscious to lay dormant to well up during his dreams and leaving ineffable traces on his consciousness.

At this point I can confidently say that he will know me for the sprints that we have from point to point and that he always wins when we are walking somewhere.  He will know, by rote, my paranoia about traffic at intersections and through parking lots and my insistence that we hold hands. (I have no idea when I will relent and trust him to walk alertly at my side.)

These clear memories are taking root as our bond becomes more tangible and a point of reference for him throughout his growth in the years ahead. If he takes up running more seriously, he will definitely remember my coaching moments about not looking back when he runs, and instead to listen for the clamour of gaining footsteps and heavy breathing to know if a competitive threat the approaches, or to watch for looming shadows if the light and route affords him that.

Last night, the recall was being wired with several sprints on the sidewalks to the train station and then from our stop onto home and I was filled with this contentment that I was not just getting him home but making memories as well.

When we got home Gabriel may have been picking up on my reflection as well.  He wandered into the office that was his bedroom after he was born and mused about it being his room.  I played the role of docent and told him where his crib used to be, though I forgot to tell him where he was rocked every night.  I did disclose to him, however, the occasion when I proudly hoisted him high out of his crib and rattled his head off the spinning ceiling fan.  I still remember the look of shock and shattered trust as the startling pain impacted him repeatedly and it was good to have that moment to fill in the past a bit and let him know that Dad is humbly fallible.  (I might have even given some context to one of those subconscious memories that are lurking about.)

The comforting realization is that apart from the routines that are familiar to him, there will be more likelihood that one-off events will now stick with him without repetition.

Dad Still Has Work To Do... and a Chance

Monday mornings. Need I say more? For all the times that I might get a chuckle on this blog from a moment or an anecdote about Gabriel's personality, growing pains, experiences or various rates of progress, it is time for me to be transparent and fess up as well.

I had to leave home early for a meeting and Gabriel asked me if I could build some Lego. It was 6:30 am and maybe it was on me for scheduling a meeting so early but when Gabriel gave an exasperated sigh, I rose to the bait. I cited the attitude in the sigh, fed up with his early wake-ups and his refusal to do much constructive (eat breakfast or get dressed) when he did.

I immediately regretted and chided myself for not letting him get past his sigh and accept the disappointment of me not being available to spend the morning with him.  That may not have been possible but it would have been a lot better for me to let the sigh go and see if he could work his way past it.  Instead I showed him a lousy way of dealing with disappointment and instead of having the patience to show him a calm to model, I blew it.  It is going to take me that many more calms and detached occasions to absorb his frustrations and see him through to the other side and his own calm and perspective about his emotions and how to manage them.

You never know when the big moments are, but it is easy to acknowledge that patterns or constellations that snowball.  There is this sense of frustration and failure and when he rolls his eyes or empties his lungs with that sigh of exasperation, I have this anxiety that it is all slipping away -- that these moments are going to be the highlights he looks back upon most often; these will be the occasions that he struggles to unpack because he needs to work that much harder to make sense of them and find a positive sense of himself despite the other moments. I worry that he will look to define himself or find satisfaction in possessions and objects rather than strong relationships and good deeds. I worry that my efforts will set the stage for a tumultuous adolescence and more battles, little communication and sending Gabriel on a quest for a more tolerable male adult to hang out with.

Easy to blow it or blow it out of proportion, I just have to figure out which I'm doing.  Not that it would be impossible for me to do both at the same time or to create a vicious circle between those two things.  When I'm not bouncing back and forth between making a mess of things or panicking about screwing up the job, I'm trying to overload a moment with a maxim or life lesson. [sigh]

Today was an up and down day. Gabriel was tricky to get into gear and out the door in time for the commute to music class but once he was out the door, he fully committed to the word, "Boogie," and stayed in gear as we powered up the hill from our place to the train station. The bonding over our Saturday morning island between the train and the bus brought the day or the week back to the state that I would love for it to be at.  As I write this, I dread the occasion when Gabriel turns that routine down at, you know, that age. I tell myself that it will happen, more in an effort to brace myself for the possibility than a specific case of pessimism.  (I will cop to a broader, more general case of pessimism.)

The rest of the morning unfolded relatively well. Music class ended with him in a state of lethargy or restlessness and I'm trying to determine if it is boredom with a class that is going too slowly. Two days earlier, my wife and I were puzzling over what to do about music classes for Gabe, who at 18 months surprised me by identifying different arrangements and orchestrations of the same song, but now has lost interest in his Kodaly classes. An hour later, he was arranging coins on Nadine's iPad cover and telling us what notes the coins were.

Okay.

He has expressed boredom with the other part of the Saturday routine, pizza with friends of mine that he has been dragged to since the bucket phase, and I was content to set that aside for the day and get on top of a few chores that I had on the to-do list.  He was good with that and when the urge to get to the loo prompted a detour, we found ourselves sitting down for burgers for lunch. I was conscious of the battles I was losing -- his preference for condiments over the meal and his sudden unfounded affinity for salt on everything -- when an elderly man say next to us.  He indulged in Gabriel for a moment but settled in for his lunch and a brief reading of Jeremiah from his well-worn and post-itted (is that a word?) Bible.  After he finished reading he packed to go and stood between the tables to tell me how I was doing.

Basically, he said he had worked with a lot of parents who didn't know what they were doing and kids who were lost because of their parenting and added that Gabriel and I were great together. To be frank, I cowered at the compliment and wanted to defer it in every way possible.  I write this not in an effort to get a few more variations on, "No, no you're fine," but to give an insight into the discomfort I felt at such a compliment at the end of the week I've had. I turned to Gabriel to more or less tell him he didn't have to agree with that and he gave me a confident nod and a thumbs up. He is incredibly generous and far more forgiving than I am. Hopefully, he'll give me a better chance at this than I give myself.