It can’t always be sunny

Explaining mortality and dealing with the death of a loved one is a situation I’d like to avoid going through with Max for as long as possible, but I know it’s entirely out of my hands. One of our close friends (and Max’s aunt by appointment) has her mother in Intensive care right now, and it will be a tense few days as she waits to see if her mom will improve.

As much as I want to shield my boy from profound sadness, I can’t isolate him away from the essential parts of human existence. Instead, I have to examine my own feelings for this wonderful woman who is perilously ill, and sort out how I’m going to deal with her loss.

Its one of the secret challenges/blessings of parenthood: you no longer have the luxury of being crippled by your own emotions. No matter how sad you are, toddlers keep toddling along, and you have to keep moving with them.  In my case, this emotional immediacy has  been the catalyst for a pretty significant amount of improvement in how I deal with my own feelings and my old hangups. I’m able to handle situations now that I would have gone to great lengths to avoid in the past, and I know it makes me a better parent.

Album Review: “High Violet” by The National

It took me a few listen-throughs of this album before I started to find the emotional anchor points, the ideas and images that I connected to. Every album by The National has been this way for me, and High Violet is no exception.

There’s a oddness to some of the lyrical imagery that proves difficult for me to fully accept, like “It’s a terrible love and I’m walking with spiders”. I can’t understand how one would walk with spiders, or what that could mean in respect to his terrible love, so I let it pass me by. But by the third track in the album, “Afraid of Everyone” I found the hook.

Songs that bring me back to listen again and again are the ones that I can empathize with, and the line “With my kid on my shoulders I try not to hurt anyone that I like” was the empathy trigger. Every parent wants to be a good and kind role model for their child, but we’re still human and caught up in the complexities of social interaction. There’s a desperation in that line that I find compelling.

Even though there are a few examples of metaphors that don’t hit home for me (“Carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees” is another one), there’s enough emotion and storytelling in the album to bring me back for repeated listening. Sonically, the songs are well crafted and big. There is both a  lush quality and a chaos, and a hint of dissonance that mirrors the unravelling in the lyrics.

Ultimately, if you already have a place in your heart for The National, this album will quickly fit in to that cubbyhole. If you’re new to the band, give the album some time to breathe and work its way into your heart. 7 out of 10.

This too Shall Pass

Parenthood is a swirling, confusing maelstrom of sudden and inexplicable changes. It’s like going to war: no matter how much training and practice you have beforehand, you’re stunned and overwhelmed as soon as the real shooting starts. I always thought that the advice being given by parenting classes, books and other parents seemed unnecessarily vague, but now I know why they were that way. Every baby is different, and they change their stripes every few hours when they’re very young.  Nap time was noon today? Tomorrow it will be 2PM. Or 11AM. Or there won’t be any nap at all.

This erratic lifestyle really clashed with my need for stability and predictability in the early days of life with Max, and my stress was very high. Now that he’s older and I’m more relaxed, I’ve found a good comfort zone between getting things done and not sweating the small stuff. I can finally roll into bed after a tough day and think to myself  “this won’t last forever, so there’s no need to get worked up”.  And amazingly, it works. And now, I’m off to shampoo the carpets ( a casuality of our first attempts at potty training).