Settle Down Dad

Well, it was quite a week last week. Young Gertrude managed to have some sort of virus that expelled just about every vile bodily fluid possible. Add to that a high fever that seemed to cause her to hallucinate (hard to tell, she’s always kind of odd . . . in a good way) and you have what we parents call a “week with little sleep.”

After Gert recovered physically it took her a few days to settle down emotionally. So that meant that she and I annoyed the crap out of each other all weekend. She decided that it was time to not listen to dad until the fourth time he said something and dad decided that he’d get irritated on the third try. So there were lots of two-year-old induced moments of comic hijinks.

At one point when I was asking her to clean up her toys for the thousandth time, she looked at me and said, I kid you not, “Settle down dad.” Before I could recover from being agog that my toddler daughter told me to settle down, she told her mother to “pick on someone your own size.”

Despite the clashes, we had a pretty good weekend. We went to some little pioneer festival at a local park, where the girls were able to try out such cosmopolitan pastimes as rope-winding and candle dipping. They also went on a pony ride, which made Gert squeal with such delight that the pony’s head exploded.

Later, on the car ride home, the girls decided to go at it over a bag of kettle corn. After suggesting that we’re not above selling them to gypsies for a paltry sum, they settled down and we had a nice evening.

This morning in the car Gert made me listen to the Beach Boys’ “Our Prayer” for twenty minutes straight. I felt I was in the middle of a Gregorian Monk reunion.

Tomorrow I’m buying Matilda the last CD she’ll ever get from me that isn’t a gift. What I mean is, after tomorrow, I’ll no longer bankroll her music purchases. I was in fourth grade when I began to chart my own musical identity (Def Leopard and Journey’s Frontiers). When I grab SMiLE tomorrow I’m also picking up a copy of Hilary Duff’s new CD, which Matilda seems to be completely oblivious about. Hilary is her favorite singer. She even saw her concert this summer. Her last disc was played so often that were it on vinyl it would have been worn out.

While I would have loved to see her grooving to Pet Sounds, but I’m happy that she has interests of her own. She’s always known that if she asked me to buy her a CD I wouldn’t hesitate. And, surprisingly, she never tried to abuse that privilege.

So tomorrow I’ll surprise her with a new CD and explain to her the significance of the moment. How she’ll be charting her own musical destiny, free to explore as she chooses. And if she’s in complete control of her purchases (and trust me, she has more cash flow than I do . . . the kid never spends a dime) then those purchases will mean much more to her. It did to me as a kid.

So for me it will be a momentous occasion. A moment to say, “You are now in control. Explore! Discover!” It’s her time to find what excites her, what touches her. For her the moment will probably a slightly irritating few minutes where she’ll have to listen to me talk.