Preludes to The Talk

"You're the one that's telling him."

"Yeah, yeah."

Each time that exchange occurs with my wife, I shrug it off, confident that it will be a while yet and that I'll stick with the basics, be as honest as possible and give him the age-appropriate information he needs without building up some myths about storks or such. Whenever the talk comes to mind, I recall the children's book on the topic I received, highlighted by a successful sperm dressed in a tuxedo and top hat and a vague cartoonish illustration of man and woman in bed under a blanket the keep me in the dark.  I wonder if the top hat takes the questions of speed and motility off the table in favour of fusing the presentability or chivalry of the man with the one in a million odds that the successful sperm overcomes but those are the challenges for a writer of children's non-fiction.  (I still might want to track down that book, though.)

There have been regular signs that The Talk is growing nigh.  There was an expression of his desire to marry his cousin that needed to be addressed and then there are discoveries that leave my son in wonder at the changes that are already occurring in his body.  The reality is that there will probably be a series of smaller talks rather than a Joycean information dump with long meandering thoughts stringing out across my consciousness as I tiptoe through the pubescent minefield and deke around my discomforts and facts with the incompetence and transparent bluster of a press secretary.

Two nights ago, however, my son slipped away from the table and returned with his Star Wars book, one that features long accounts of the original trilogy of movies.  He plopped the book on the table and asked us, "Do you know what my favorite part of Star Wars is?"

We shrugged in helplessness at the myriad answers that we could choose from and then he pointed his finger at the book, "Princess Leia's costume."

I never took to Princess Leia.  The whole buns on the side of the head thing lost me in 1977 and by the time the slave costume came to be in 1983 I had moved on.  For my son, however, after a steady diet of anthropomorphic trucks, OCD animals, empathic sheep, mischievous dinosaurs and talking trains -- to mention a few of the characters he has encountered in film and book -- Leia has been an oasis of femininity.  The appeal of the slave outfit to a five-year-old, though, raises a red flag or nine.

"She doesn't want to be wearing that."

"Why?"

"She's Jabba's slave."

"What's a slave?"

(Thankfully, there's no dog collar on her in his book.)

"A slave is forced to do something they don't want to.  If she doesn't do what Jabba wants, he would throw her in the pit with the... with the monster."

"The Rancor."

"Yes." (He does know more about Star Wars than me.  And he knows that he does.)

I continue, "She's not dressed like that because she wants to be.  You have to ask if she wants to be dressed that way."

The questions stopped at that point and there could have been a lot more I could say about how to treat women or regard them but that will have to be for a day that seems to be coming a lot sooner than I had anticipated.  I did not go on a long harangue on the treatment of women and the need to look beyond the exposed skin, and hopefully I can keep that one in my back pocket for a lot longer. My realization is that there will not be one talk that will tidy up the topic and let me walking away clapping the chalkdust from my hands. It will be an ongoing dialogue that will never close or end.

For Small Work or Small Workers?

One of the things I enjoy about condominium living is the low upkeep.  No lawn mowing, no raking leaves or any of the yard work that I am quite content to steer my time away from.  At the same time, though, there is a whole raft of responsibilities and chores that The Lad manages to avoid as well.  He is starting to get more attentive about putting his dishes in the sink and dishwasher as required but the bigger chores seem to have been evaded so far.

Fortunately, he has no reluctance to help and if there is lifting to be done or work at his grandparents he is prompt to pitch in.  Today was a rare occasion when he had some work to do outside. After a decent-sized dump of snow, our parking stall required some attention before the end of the day and I started digging up the snow in the stall.  The one next to ours was vacant as well, so I took on the extra space and set about pushing the powder aside and blasting at the icier pack that was at the edges of the stall and threatened to leave our car and a distinct slant when it finally parked.  I took a break from that for a moment to assure a neighbour that the shovel I was using was the common one and beat a path so she could get her tiny Toyota Echo out of its stall and into the cookie dough of Calgary's streets.

When my wife came home at the end of the day with the Gabriel waving enthusiastically from the back seat, I knew I would have an assistant even though most of my work was done (and about to be covered by the parked car.)  Gabriel was eager to get some shovelling in and headed inside to get the smaller common shovel, which is, oddly enough, just his size.  He threw himself into his work on the vacant neighbouring stall as we cleared that out and with gas to burn after that, I turned our attention to the stall that the Echo had vacated a few moments earlier.  As dusk approached and fell, the clear skies brought a brilliance to the occasion that made the work and day feel much warmer than they were.  As we continued, I asked him to check with other people in the parking lot if they needed the shovels or needed some shovelling done, conscious of hogging the tools of ignorance to ourselves while other residents fought their way out.

We were good and free to carry on with our work.  There was even a moment when Gabriel enthusiastically shouted out, "Teamwork," with as deep a voice as a five-year-old can muster.  As darkness fell, he was undaunted and was eager to keep digging away wherever we could even though we had four stalls done at this point of the evening.  After a while, he complained that he had a pain in his back and I suggested that it was muscles that he was not accustomed to using.  He accepted my explanation despite a precocious skepticism about much that I say and continued on.  The offer of supper did not even ease his efforts.  He had a full head of steam and was in no mood to stop.

In the end, I hope there is a sense of connection with the people that he shovelled stalls for, even if the work goes unnoticed.  He spoke about the exercise he was getting, but I hoped that my message about helping the neighbours slipped past his skepticism as easily as the suggestion about the pain in his back being a sign of good work.  I'll wait and see.  In the meantime, I'm left to wonder if it is a coincidence that the second shovel is just his size.

The Dawdle: Lessons for Dad from the Walks to Daycare

We have had the good fortune of a great, supportive daycare for the last few years. A few days ago we found ourselves quizzing Gabriel on continents he learned and can add that his math is coming along too.  The care and attention he has received was a key factor prompting us to hold him back a year. One major advantage of that daycare, however, has been the location.  Daycare is a scant 500 metres away and apart from allowing me to pick him up and drop him off, it has meant walks to and from daycare to bookend our Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.

At the start of the day, there is the hustle to determine if he wants to walk with me or get a drive with his mother and to get him out the door.  On the night before, it may actually be a strategic move on our part to ask, "Who's walking you to school?", instead of the more neutral, drive-with-Mom-is-a-possibility use of "taking." (As I write this, I wonder if there is the slightest component of a quiz or a call for an expected response in our question rather than allowing him to flex some independent decision-making.) Getting him fed, dressed and out the door ends with him wanting to sprint down our apartment hallway to start our day.

The walks are consistent. I am always in more of a rush to get going and ensure that I'm at the office in time for the start of my day.  At the end of the day, there is less urgency on my part but the speed of his walk is dictated by his mood and energy level at the end of the day.  There are days when he wants to play king of the mountain on each pile of snow.  On others, he pays homage to the same tree (stump now, actually) that got knocked down in a hailstorm in June 2015. Some days he is exhausted and inconsolable. We race each other or run holding hands for the sake of speed without the competition. I am unrestrained in my paranoia about the traffic that is around and striving to ensure that he is vigilant about the cars.  We examine the skies on the predawn walks to acknowledge the huge moon or the colour on the horizon that promises a beautiful day makes us heed the coming of night.  We pause to take in the towers of downtown.

My mood is a factor on those walks as well.  In reality, I am writing this post to work through and trade in my own rush to get home for the presence to take in that dawdle more appreciatively.  My desire to cover those 500 metres quickly can take the opportunity out of the walk because of my poor perception of time. We do race from time to time on the walk home so I ought to take it when it comes.

If he wants to take a different route and walk through a path of large boulders to test his balance, his will wins out, as it should. When I am in a rush, I wish I could pressure him to pick up the pace or take a more direct route, but ultimately this part of the day, unbound by the walls and fence of the daycare is a moment that is his own. Apart from the simple exercise of the walk, there is a measure of independence that he can exercise by stopping the way he does and dictating a change in route if one appeals to him. Ironically, despite the independence that we might associate with the car -- it is mere mobility that a car provides -- it may actually be during this walk that he can develop autonomy with each step he does or doesn't take.  Whether I am holding his hand or a few dozen metres away beckoning him to catch up or cautioning him to watch the car there is an independence that he can exercise with each (watched) step he takes.  The talks about the day become familiar as he talks about a friend he had a hard time with.  I try to tell him to ask how his friends are rather than distancing himself and wait for the time when he can tell me he did and that it worked.

It will be years before I know if these walks amount to anything resembling an independence or autonomy that car-bound kids lack. In reality it will be a theory tested by evidence that I select quite carefully. Next September, when he starts -- as he already puts it, "real school" -- the walk will actually be a little shorter and we will start to grapple with the question of when to let him walk entirely on his own.  I started that walk one my own right away.  It was a 200 metre walk (thank you Google Maps) and I only had one residential street to cross.  Gabriel's will be a little longer and cross a major thoroughfare where moving violations occur with regular, cacophonous frequency.  As I did in the 1970's, I am confident that Gabriel will, when we allow him, be able to navigate that route with the good sense that I did.  For now, though, we will dawdle.

The Same Boy

The question is already asked: "Where did the time go?"  Gabriel is only five now but the time has done what it intends to do.  I never quite get in the moment as often as I could or ought and I'm looking ahead, wondering what a particular bout of rebellion or rambunctiousness will amplify to when he is older and bigger and I am forever pondering the butterfly effect of a moment that got away: I'm impatient for a moment or inattentive and there is that erosion of the connection that sends him down a path that reflects so badly on me.  Robin Williams used to raise that self-doubt by contrasting two futures: one where is child is accepting a Nobel Prize and at the other extreme asking, "Do you want fries with that?"

There is probably no advantage in looking back rather than behind.  The ideal is to be in the moment and absorbing the opportunity as it is.  There are the easier moments that are still and captured. Looking at his awed, rapt face as it is bathed in the blue glow of the screen in a darkened theatre and he is transported and transfixed one of those few times (to date) that he has had the experience of a movie.  The uncertain but committed buy-in to the excitement of the first New Year's Eve he stayed up for.  There was the sense that this was a Big Deal, and he threw himself into it, but he was in no way certain why.  The tentativeness as he rushed to the video of the countdown was subtle, undeniable but amusing.

The routines are harder to get that stillness and contentment within.

A few days back, Friday, he and I were together for the day and there was little that I could interest him in doing out of the house.  All he really wanted to do was put together Lego and, to my surprise, he was not quite engaged enough in that to finish it all the way through.  He would recruit me for long stretches of the construction and it was more likely out of his disinterest in the task than a desire to include me in something other than sorting through the pieces for him.  He was not interested in any of the outings I've normally gotten him to leave home for and the lone exception, a trip to the playground was clearly scheduled for, "The middle of the afternoon."  No earlier.

When we finally got outside and headed to the playground, he dawdled and played in the snow, stopping regularly to kick and stomp at it wherever it captured his imagination more than the destination did.  After a few hours of cabin fever around the Lego, the delays in the walk taxed me a little.  After stretching the distance between us a few times and never prompting him to catch up, I managed, somehow, to flash back to the same walk years earlier -- I somehow make that sounds like decades, when it is just 2-3 years -- when he did the same thing, but was only able to call it, "No." He is the same boy.  I waited and watched as he Godzillaed a few mounds of snow to dust and moved on to the next.  When he finally caught up, I rested a hand on my head and reminded myself that he's the same boy. At the same time I suspected that this particular fascination with the snow would get buried in maturity and expressed differently, if at all, as he gets older.

At the playground there were reminders again. We were alone but he was untroubled by the solitude or the cold and he took to the same routines as in previous years.  The swing captivated him but he graduated out of the bucket and into the big swing.  I pushed him for 30-45 minutes as he struggled to pump himself into motion.  Godzilla was not able to crush the snow down sufficiently to give him the room his feet needed to pump.

In that rhythm, standing behind him and taking his guidance on how many hands to use and how hard to push, I ceased to look ahead or back and I just settled into the task of pushing him just right each time as the snow seeping into my shoes.

Game Time

I am always conscious of how much time I spend with Gabriel and how good that time is.  Still, I have a gag response to the term "q--l-ty time" that inhibits me from forcing the matter or parenthesizing a moment as one of intense purposeful bonding that I could close and discard. Instead I've contented myself with being there with him for walks to and from daycare; and books, whether read on the sofa, in bed or from the side of tub. Whenever I give into his request for TV I try to sit with him to avoid using it as the electronic babysitter. Invariably, though, I will gravitate toward the kitchen to prepare supper or tidy something up rather than zone out or silently critique as Gabriel makes the mental shopping list required for him to achieve his (apparent) goal of becoming a Paw Patrol completist.

Because of his attachment to TV time and my tendency to disengage when he's in front of the TV, I have grown conscious of that void in the day where we are out of touch with each other.  There will be programming at some point that we can connect over and talk about, but the programming for a five-year-old only prompts conversation if there is a nostalgic, "This is what I watched..." introduction to the likes of Friendly Giant or Mr. Dressup.

In the face of the void that TV imposes on the day, I've tried a few times over the last year to get him interested in board games.  The gathering around the table for a board game, cards or a jigsaw puzzle each is loaded with memories of family and place that is immensely evocative. I've tried quite a few times to interest Gabriel in a game and there have been a few lapsed-attention efforts at Snakes and Ladders and a few occasions where I've gotten Trouble out of the box but could not engage him in much more that the percussive sequence of crush-pop-rattle that was the "roll" of the dice.  His mastery of jigsaw puzzles, like that of Lego is set and it is easy for him to lock in on the challenge when it is in front of him, but that can leave me on the sidelines.

Last night, with a stint in front of the TV finished and him asking for more TV after supper, I attempted to get him to try Trouble and we finished two games.  Best of all, this morning he asked if we could play again.  He counted his turns properly and mastered the simple task of starting his count on the next space on the board rather than the one he was in.  Rules were grasped and followed.  They were tested at times to but it comes with the territory.  There will be many games to follow.  I'm recall my capability to play double solitaire when my grandmother at the lake when I was seven and ponder introducing Gabriel to war (the card game).  More games will appear after Trouble, in their rightful sequence: Sorry, Clue, and maybe we will, in time, aspire to Life, Monopoly and the board flipping etiquette of Risk (ok, maybe not that one.)  All things to look forward to for the laughter and small lessons that will come from them and the closer connection that will come from sitting face-to-face on the floor or at the table.

At a time when he is holding his own more and more in conversation and surprises with the turns of phrase or topics that he introduces it is good to discovery that a refuge in the week where we will slow down to connect face to face.  He is in the middle (or early stages) of a growth spurt that has turned him ravenous, cranky and drowsy at times over the last 5-6 weeks and it is one of the unnecessary-necessary reminders that this will blur by fast and that the bond will be challenged by friends with the lure of video games, suppers over at friends, after school activities where he'll be home later and the kitchen is nothing more than a transit point or a node of quick fuelling as lives diverge step by incremental step. There will be stolen conversations on the road but the first successful foray introducing the game habit will promise a stillness and trove of memories that we have not been able to form yet.  It is a comfort to see his growth be complemented by the capacity to sit through a game and finish it, not to mention dust himself off for the needed rematch.

By the way, if anyone has a green peg they can spare, let me know.

First Lullabye

We are at a moment where my son seems formed and less likely to present a revelation to us.  He will grow, but there is the feeling that for the next little while, there is little likelihood for surprise. According to what I have read about growth in children and the formation of their personalities, he is pretty much wired, as it were. At the age of 5, he is obsessed with Star Wars, Lego and Paw Patrol. His knack for completing complex Lego sets is prodigious.  Consequently, I have consigned my quiver of ironic jokes about pressuring him to go into Art school, because it now seems unlikely on the part of the budding engineer.  As he assembles Lego or completes puzzles, he shows a spatial ability that makes the completion of a 1300-piece set uneventful for him and an affinity or affection for those challenges that surpasses any tolerance for wrestling with a creative block.

He is big for his age. He loves to run with me and no walk is complete without him challenging me to a race over some distance.  As was the case as a newborn, he fights sleep even seconds after acknowledging he is tired or burrowed into us for the assurance that he will not be alone for his transit into the night. Books are both obsession and refuge and might still be ahead in the neck and neck race with the iPad for his attention. He is a poor sleeper and the nights are still punctuated by his dark AM requests to sleep with us. He continues to demonstrate a knack for music and has filed away a few favorite hooks and choruses that he will sing or dance to when the mood strikes.

He is still the same extroverted, affectionate kid he was when he was a budding candy striper visiting his grandfather in the hospital in early 2012. He left Tim Horton's yesterday only after giving a hug to an older gentleman who complimented him on his new interest in practicing his letters. Once again, mom and dad struggle with the dilemmas that come with having a child who is so open and trusting with strangers (most of the time.) In that is an example of the questions that lie ahead: will his affection and openness make him vulnerable to the overrated threats all parents dread or will they evolve into something that is supportive and nurturing to those around him.  Time and the forks in his road ahead will determine that but it is clear that he is on a path that will shape his affections rather than the more emotionally cautious route that I have followed.

But, last night, as my weary extrovert was giving into fatigue and the early stages of a stomach bug that ails him today, which I believe was his first "sick day" (albeit from daycare) I surprised myself. After a long reading session on the sofa, the floppy, fatigued, yet still sleep-resistant lad sprawled on the sofa rather than dragging himself to his room, which prompted me to utter, with the faintest hint of melody, "Little boy, little boy won't you lay your body down," the first of many lines from Paul Simon's "St. Judy's Comet" that summed up the moment.

I've found it a challenge to sing my son to sleep, never quite finding the precise melodic whisper something I could get the right volume and pitch on, words trapped and muffled in the throat rather than given their appropriate whisper.  I've usually delivered a burr or a hum of some sort that was only a half-hearted approximation.  Last night though I did the song justice and sang it out - except for the "make your famous daddy look so dumb" which is Mr. Simon's own private confession about his struggle with lullabyes.

The likelihood is that he will surprise my wife and I in some way and that there will be some discovery of character or timing that will catch me off guard as we go through the journey together. There will be times as well though when, I excavate some part of myself and surprise him and perhaps myself too as I retrace parts of myself that are dormant or buried under the detritus of (dubiously) adult preoccupations.  He'll have a revelation that I was a kid once or that there are sections of my path that can be retraced and shared with him as I tentatively unveil some forgotten or hidden aspects of myself.

On the Playground

My family lives in a condominium so we do not have a backyard to lay claim to as our own. Fortunately we are within 500 metres walking distance of three playgrounds and we regularly take advantage of those when Gabriel is restless and needs to get some burn for a while. It is quite easy for him to lose all track of time as he chases other kids around, make friends for the brief time that they share together and expand his abilities on the apparatus.  It is an interesting way to mark the passage of time as he progresses.

He still has a fondness for the toddler bucket swing, but he has limited his turns to about 10 minutes instead of an arm-aching sequence of an hour top off by a half-dozen additions of "two more minutes." He has graduated to the bigger swing and after getting a scrape or two - but thankfully not a faceplant - when he first ventured onto it this summer he is managing to pump his legs in time with the movement and I have more opportunity to sit back and observe.

Observing alone can be fraught with dilemmas. There was one occasion where I found myself observing him observing to older boys who were playing some game and inflicting some punishment on one another.  The smaller one of the two was consistently at a disadvantage and I winced when they started using the term "pole-dancing," but commenting on their behaviour or Gabriel's immobile curiosity was probably going to bring attention to the odd dynamic between the three of them. My interest and focus on them heightened when they invited Gabriel to play with them, some odd for of tag that required the one who was "it" to walk with his eyes closed on the playground equipment. Gabriel said he understood the game, but after a moment of unresponsiveness when the game started the older boys adjusted and integrated him into the game without much harm.

There is always the opportunity for Gabriel to get exposed to something "mature" when he is there and most recently it was a new acquaintance who was quite quick to issue the "double bird."  Gabriel did not seem to pick up on it or attribute any meaning despite the fervour with which it was issued. (Gabriel has stuck it out incidentally from time to time and despite an occasion a year ago when he earned a loud response to it when he did it at the Thanksgiving table, he still hasn't adopted regular intentional use of it... I think.)

I'm not always at a distance.  More often than not, I get roped into a game of tag with Gabriel and whoever else he has gotten to know during our visit and somehow these sessions of tag take more out of me than a 10K run.  It must be the stops and starts. Aside from that, there is always the requirement to spin the carousel for a while as kids climb up and down.

The toughest thing about the playground visits is when the convergence to make new friends results in an untimely parting and his own upset at being left alone.  It is one of the few times when I get the sense of the vulnerability that he feels at being alone and without kids his age nearby and always at the ready to play. Often the occasion makes it difficult to settle him down and it is hard to console him. The flipside of that, two weeks ago, was when Gabriel found himself spontaneously invited to a birthday party that was taking part at the playground.  I had a sense that the invite was not parentally endorsed and anticipated the painful awkwardness as Gabriel's status as an included friend would have quickly diminished in a furrow of confusion. The range of logistics covering grab bags and unreceived presents was going to test the goodwill of people I had never met before.  We had been at the playground for well over two hours and it was time to get some food into him.

The playground visits will continue, even through the winter months and there will be times when I will have to figure out how to maneuver myself and my son through the interactions that present themselves as he grows into more independence and new relationships. He will continue to give challenges to his acrophobic father and I'll even dare to climb what he climbs far easier than I.  I can also tell that he has my lack of upper body strength when he's on climbing apparatus.  It is hard to tell what comes each time we go there as the cast of playmates evolves, but each time I ask him to behave or come back to me to check on something or to head for home he comes back - the tether between us still solid for all of the influence and opportunity that emerge each time we go there.