Joshua likes to be included in my day-to-day routine. He enjoys domestic tasks such as doing dishes and sweeping, although his version of these chores often generates further domestic chores such as vacuuming up glass from broken dishes, mopping up puddles of soapy water, and removing crumbs from his stuffed dog which he claims is a broom. He likes to pretend he's paying bills while I struggle to balance our checkbook, and he always joins me for a cup of tea midmorning. In recent weeks, he has come to enjoy the time I spend practicing my musical instruments. He sits on the piano bench with a music stand set in front of him, and plays his "bass", his "violin", and sometimes the "cello". (He usually fashions his stringed instruments out of a plastic fife or tin whistle, using a pencil or small mallet for a bow. I am proud to say that at the age of two, he knows how to hold the instruments appropriately, either under his chin for violin, or leaning against his shoulder for bass and cello.) He vocalizes his most virtuosic imaginary sonatas, stopping occasionally to exclaim, "I like this note, mama!", or "That bass sounds goooood." When I finish a piece, sometimes he applauds.
He's gotten so comfortable with my practice routine lately, that yesterday he insisted on taking a nap in the music room while I worked. He made a little bed for himself out of decorative pillows, lay down right there in front of me, and drifted off to sleep while I played a Francaix sonata. He slumbered blithely through a piece by Leclair, although I probably would have dozed off too, since I found my reading of it to be rather uninspired. Unbelievably, he also slept through my rehearsal of Petrouchka, which is not remotely soothing. I stopped short of playing the piccolo part to The Firebird (another Stravinsky tour de force) since that would have been bad parenting. It occurred to me as I felt the first tiny flutters of movement in my belly, reminding me that I'm sharing my body with another human, that Joshua has probably been sleeping through my musical preparations since before his birth.
I think it's possible that when he heads to preschool, he may be the only kid in the class that knows who wrote Petrouchka ("Mr. Stravinsky", he says matter-of-factly), has changed the lyrics of Old MacDonald to "Old MacDowell wrote two piano concerti, ee i ee i oh", and can recognize the difference between Charlie Parker's alto and John Coltrane's tenor. It's eerie when he walks into my practice room and asks, "Is that Mendelssohn?", especially when that is indeed what I am working on. I'm thinking I may want to start showing him some episodes of Sesame Street, and soon. I have made it a house rule, however, that he can't begin violin lessons until he's potty trained.
2 comments:
You know, when I first saw that picture you posted to Fotolog of him sleeping while you played the flute, my first thought was how the heck does she get him to do that, and my immediate second thought was that, like you said, he must have been used to the sound after hearing it all the time in the womb-- that it might even be soothing.
I worked in a very busy shopping mall while I was pregnant with Isaac, and until he was able to walk he would almost always start falling asleep immediately whenever we went to the mall, no matter how noisy it was.
Of course, as soon as he learned to walk he realized he could race around finding toys to grab and 3-year-old girls to flirt with at the mall instead of sleeping, so he doesn't sleep there anymore . . .
This post makes me wish very much that I had any musical talent whatsoever to pass on to my son. As it is, his eyes light up when I bang out "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on his xylophone-dog, but that's about the extent of my ability to offer a musical education. Ah well. At least he is already starting to read a couple of words. He may wind up a boring book-geek like me, but he'll be a GOOD book-geek ;)
Very sweet post.
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