Influence (Babble)

I have a BA in music with distinction in Music Cognition.  I’ve been playing violin since third grade and viola since high school.  I’m employed at a conservatory, play with Festival City Symphony, and founded my own string quartet that was awarded ‘best in weddings’ for our region by the magazine The Knot two years in a row. 

I am not bragging because I know how much practice I sorely need to become the musician I aspire to be, and in the music world pecking order I rank very very very low.  Yeah, now think even lower.  No, I mention all of this just to stack some weight on my side in order to salvage a bit of my ego when I say–with all seriousness–that the greatest musical influence on my children has been my husband.  Ian.  The guy with the engineering and economic geography degrees.  It’s ridiculous.

Not that you have to have degrees in music to have your opinions or preferences on it be meaningful.  That’s insane.  Musicians strive to make music that is appreciated by a world primarily populated by non-musicians.  Without an audience the final step of what we are trying to do is obliterated.  I spend a lot of time telling non-musicians that their opinions count and not to be intimidated by snobs.

What I am trying to say, is that music is such an important component of my life that I made the (apparently crazy) assumption that when I had children, I would be the one to introduce them to the wonders of it.  I would have an impact on their preferences and could lead them down a musical path that I was familiar with.  Ha.



Turns out I can’t compete with my husband.  Ian could have been a jingle writer.  He comes up with catchy/annoying little tunes that stick in your head he and used them for reminding the kids to do things.  He made up one for telling the kids to brush their teeth, and one for washing hands, and one for eating corn….  He used to organize little dance-a-thons before bedtime to wear the kids out so they would sleep better, and he would drag out his Art of Noise records and play them songs by the Cranberries on his computer.  They knew all sorts of music he liked by heart.  During his stinits as stay-at-home dad the kids were introduced to all sorts of songs I didn’t even know.  It was silly to let it bug me, but there where days it did.  You can’t always control what rubs you the wrong way, even when you know better.

I’ve been thinking about this more than usual lately while we prepare for my husband to return home.  I will admit I have taken advantage of his absence to commandeer the CD and record players.  I can’t be accused of forcing too much of the stuff I like on my kids, especially since in the car I try to let them pick the music, and more often than not we find a middle ground between what they will enjoy and what I don’t mind listening to again and again and again.  We listen to a lot of They Might Be Giants, particularly ‘No’ and ‘Here Comes Science,’ but they can also sing along to quite a few Barenaked Ladies tunes now.  My kids know a lot more music from the 1980’s than is probably normal, but that’s because they like to run the record player themselves and that was the last time I bought any records.  (When Aden has friends over the ‘Ghostbusters’ soundtrack often ends up on the turntable.)

It’s been so long since Ian was a part of any routine here that all the little tunes he sang have faded from the kids’ memories.  Aden might remember a few of them if she heard them, but I don’t think Mona or Quinn would.  (It’s amazing what kids forget.  Mona used to have all of Mary Poppins memorized–every bit of dialogue, every song, every gesture–and when we ran across it in the video store recently it was completely new to her just a few years later.)  It will be good to have all the little songs back, and probably new annoying ones to get stuck in our heads when Ian is a real live present member of our family again and not just some kind of ghost who calls us on a satellite phone from time to time.

Between choir and TV, school and their friends, I don’t kid myself that I will have much influence on my kids’ musical lives in the grand scheme of things, but I’m trying to decide if there are a few more tunes I can worm into their little heads before their dad comes home and his influence becomes dominant in that area again.  I may be able to play along with them as they practice Bach and occasionally sneak some old Paul Simon tune onto the CD player on the ride to school, but I know where their true source of musical inspiration usually lies.  I can’t fight the tooth brushing song.  And at this point, I don’t even want to try.

Amnesia (Babble)

I like to think I have a pretty good brain.  It keeps track of all kinds of appointments and everyone’s shoe sizes and a long list of arbitrary toddler preferences about food and silverware.

But some things I never remember.  Not until they recur, at least, and then every time I think, “Oh yeah, this again.”  The classic example for me is every month I think my period is done early, but my husband (when he’s here) reminds me it’s just the fake-out before the last couple of days of flow.  So while I’m thinking of some of the things I never remember specific to my husband’s recent visit, I thought I’d jot them down in the hopes that maybe they’ll finally stick.  I feel as if future homecomings will go smoother if I can just not let that selective amnesia creep in.

The first example that came up during the Christmas visit was that my husband is always allergic to the house when he gets back.  Apparently the desert is great for combating allergies.  Ian said in Iraq everyone’s skin cleared up and no one sniffled.  Ian’s always had trouble with certain kinds of pets and dust, and every time he comes home I forget that I need to do a really thorough cleaning before he arrives. 

We wasted two whole days of our time together washing all the bedding and curtains and futon covers and beating the rugs to death in the backyard.  Dusting is just not a priority for me normally, and since it doesn’t affect anyone else in the house when Ian’s not around I don’t think of it.  It’s all I can do to keep the kids fed and bathed and the toys picked up, so dust is unsightly to me, but it never strikes me as an urgent problem.  When Ian returns from any time away with the Army there are a few minutes of happy greetings, and then he starts sniffling and sneezing and I feel about as horrible as he sounds.  I’m trying to etch it into my brain that I need to attack the dust before he comes home, not wait until he gets here.


The other thing is not really specific to deployment, but it’s more noticeable because of it.  I have to stop expecting that he knows what I want.  I don’t know why this takes me by surprise every time, but it does without fail.  I know during this last visit he was technically the one on a break from something, but I just assumed he would do what needs doing and I would get a break too.  I don’t mean to say he did nothing, because that’s certainly not the case, but he never seems to pick the things I want him to do when I want him to do them.  (As I write that down it looks completely unreasonable, but it doesn’t feel that way in real life.  I’m sure I’m guilty of the same thing, but he’s too polite to say it.) 

Certain things seem to me to be obvious, and apparently they just aren’t.  He was great about dishes and a couple of specific projects I requested, but I was up extra late every night playing catch up with the cleaning.  He gave me time to myself at the violin store which was great, and I got to take Aden out alone to see the Nutcracker for an afternoon, but then I got home and all the stuff I would have done in that time still needed to get done.  The laundry still needed to be finished and the kitchen table was sticky (that one really bugs me) and there was massive clutter everywhere.  I hated that I spent any of my short time with him home being annoyed, but there were evenings where he just read a book and went to bed and I muttered to myself while tossing legos into a box so I wouldn’t step on them in the night.  I know in his mind he’s keeping out of my way somehow, but it ends up feeling like instead of sharing the work I am just picking up after one more person.  Next time I will try to be clear about what I want so there won’t be any misunderstanding. I won’t assume he’ll jump in and tackle the projects I think look obvious.

I need to remember to buy food my husband likes that I don’t.  He gets home and the first day he doesn’t know what to do for lunch.  Not that this isn’t easily remedied, but still, I’m amazed that I can’t think to pick up pickle relish until I watch him open the fridge.
We both need to start remembering that when Ian comes home and tries to get the kids to toe the line that he sounds scarier than I do.  He can say exactly the same things I say and in the same tone, but coming from a man it sounds more threatening.  Ian’s a gentle and sweet guy, but we always have at least one episode when he comes back where someone winds up cowering behind my knees because the way daddy told them to pick up toys scared them.  I want to avoid this, so if I can just keep it in my head that maybe Ian shouldn’t be doing any disciplinary things for the first month until they’re used to the sound of him again it could help.

And this has nothing to do with deployment, but while I’m on the subject of memory, before I go to bed tonight I’m going to try and remember to sew up the holes in my coat pockets.  I think there are at least two sets of keys currently in the lining of my winter coat because I never remember the holes are there after I take the coat off.  Every time I’ve gone outside in the past two months I’ve thought, “Oh yeah!  Got to sew up those stupid pockets!”  Of course, living in the mental obstacle course that is raising children, it’s not surprising that every time we get inside the house someone is offering up a distraction that boots the pocket problem right out of my head, but still.  (Stupid pocket holes.)

I’m sure there are many more things I could add, but compiling a list of things I can’t remember is, by definition, a bit of a paradox.  (Sort of like when my grandmother was given pills for her memory and couldn’t recall if she’d taken any.  Don’t know why the doctors didn’t see that one coming.)