Positively Glorious!

Cami Kaos wrote a post about bedtime, and it got me thinking about possibilities.

Wait. Scheiße, that’s not right. Let me start again…

Cami Kaos wrote a post about her daughter’s bedtime, and it got me thinking about possibilities for when Jessie and I have kids. We’ve been talking about having them lately- or at least at some point in the future- and I have to admit a bit of fear about the reduction of my already too reduced personal time.

That fear is furthered by statements from even blissfully happy parents like Cami, statements such as:

“She didn’t want to use the bathroom, wash her hands, brush her teeth, put on her pajamas or get in bed. She did want bed time stories. Lots and lots of bedtimes stories (which she totally didn’t get, I only read her one story because I’m a hard ass that way).”

That’s the point when I start thinking “Man, having kids would suck.”

But just today I was listening to a great Irish air by Mary Bergin on Last.FM and started to wonder if I was just flat out wrong about that thought.

I know what you’re thinking: “But John, why ever would an Irish tin whistle song make you reconsider your deep-seated fears about the destruction of your personal life by a tiny, helpless poop-making machine.”

Let me ‘splain.

In a word: Music. One of the things I miss in a hectic life is that I don’t take enough time to play music. Although I’ve always been a drummer, I’m also a bit of a wind player. In fact, you could say that I’m more a wind player than anything because during the hardest times of my life, my solace has always been either a clarinet or- more often- my Flute (That’s a Native American Flute. Uh, yeah, some of us were playing them prior to Dances With Wolves.) It’s the wind instruments I turn to when I’m in trouble. It’s them I turn to when I need help, or just some meditation. There’s just something very peaceful to me about the sound of music on the wind.

So, my initial reaction was that there would be less time to play music, But I’ve had to reconsider that recently. You see, for a couple years now, I’ve been exploring the similarity between Native American and Celtic flute music. That is to say that I’ve been appreciating Celtic-sounding music on my Native flute (I played one composition for my auntie once and made her brake down in tears). Very recently; however, I’ve begun to play the pennywhistle and Irish flute, and have been looking at the music from a different perspective. Instead of trying to play Celtic music on a Native flute (which, basically, doesn’t work very well), I’ve begun appreciating the similarities to my own music as I play Celtic music on an Irish flute or whistle.

And so I’ve been listening to more Irish and Scottish music. Every day, in fact.

And have been realizing how beautifully wistful much of those Irish airs are, and how similar they are in feeling to the music in my flute’s breath.

And then, at the same time as I read Cami’s post, I started to realize how much I liked it when my father would- on those very, very rare occasions when he was sober and in a good mood at the same time- hum a song to me as I went to sleep.

And there it was. The feeling that I might actually make a decent father. What if I didn’t read bedtime stories at all? What if I played my flute to send my child to sleep? If I did that, it wouldn’t really matter if they wanted more, because all that means is that I get to practice more. I wouldn’t have to limit them to one song… in fact, I wouldn’t want to!

It’s actually concevable that the situation could arise where my son or daughter wants to stay up for an extra two hours and I think:

“Hrm, more songs? Don’t want to sleep, huh? Well, good for me- I rarely get to play my flute this much… How about I play this song from Sligo, but with a bit of a Lakhota flair?”