Baby Mozart
There comes a time in the life of every middle-class, overly Instagrammed mom where it is not enough to keep your small child alive: you must also enroll him in toddler music class, for approximately one billion dollars a year. Suddenly, it is no longer deemed “crushing it” to ensure that he does not stick his fingers in a socket (or if he does, making sure it is not super wet), nor to congratulate yourself if he eats something resembling food before marching — naked — into fifty-degree weather, ready to injure himself on a fire hydrant. Oh no! Suddenly, we must also place a maraca in his hand while a white woman who sounds like a Disney princess sings about frogs; watching on as other parents, their glazed expressions rarely meeting yours, smile resignedly at children who also place the maracas straight into their mouths, hold them there, and chew.
Of course, there are the ones who were born for this. The rare three-year-old who is like “oh, GLISSANDO?” or picks up a ukulele and plays the shit out of it. I have met these three-year-olds, and have a knee-jerk response to try to impress them. Call it trauma, call it programming; I call it common sense, because these are the kids who will one day have backstage passes to the Grammys, which I’m not giving up on going to. Not yet. I have, however, given up on getting my son to enjoy “drum circle time” when we show up (ten minutes late) to music class each week. When the teacher, her h̶a̶l̶o̶ curly hair bouncing, passes out tiny djembes — to children who can BARELY walk up one stair without falling, but sure, give them expensive instruments — I feel adrenaline coursing through my veins. Maybe this will be the moment my child, my firstborn son, reveals himself as a prodigy of the DRUM! But no. No. My kid alternates between kicking the drum away like it is a diseased animal, and picking up two tiny hammers — where he got them, I’ll never know — and playing something that sounds shockingly akin to the opening bars of “Whip It” by Devo. It’s not bad. But it’s not prodigy material.
I never wanted a prodigy before I joined music class. Truly, I didn’t. But when faced with the other parents and nannies, each one of them toting children who somehow have both shoes AND socks on, and occasionally piss in the toilet and use hand sanitizer with true pandemic-baby devotion, I feel something rise up in me. It’s not panic exactly. I’d say it’s panic adjacent. When the teacher is playing something hymn-like on her guitar and asking the children to identify colors on the questionable, oversized rug, and she points to the color blue and asks my son what color it is, and he says “GREEN” with adorable sincerity, I am equal parts enamored and mortified. Damnit! I think. Damnit, kid, you don’t want it enough. She said blue! BLUE!!!” And I make a mental commitment to do 2 hours of flashcards when we get home, or take a beta blocker, or both, but then we circle up and sing a song about goldfish, and I forget everything I’ve ever wanted. Then we show up the following week and do it all over again.
We ran into a friend, once, as we were sprinting across the parking lot (ten minutes late) to make it to music. She had just brought her infant daughter to a makeup class, and she had the vague facial expression — and hair — of someone who had just narrowly escaped being hit by a jet. “My coworker asked me how my vacation was going,” she gasped, pulling shrapnel from her shoulder and adjusting her diaper bag. “I told him, it’s not vacation.” The nerve, I thought, blood boiling so high that it nearly came out of my eyeballs. This was not a vacation. This was war. But before I knew it, we made it into the small room with the snotty kids singing Raffi, took off our shoes, and my son said “BLUE” when he really meant blue — and I was overcome with so much pride that I forgot everything I’ve ever hated, including men who make comments about maternity leave.
You’ll notice a theme. Parenting is a whole lot of forgetting, and some of choosing what to remember. Sometimes, of course, there’s no choice.
For example, I’ll never forget the days when I was too rushed to eat breakfast, because without fail, these are the days that my son approaches music class like a WWE match. Since this is a class for toddlers, the actual music part is secondary to what most toddlers actually want to do: run in and out of brightly colored plastic hoops, grab the one thing that you’ve told them not to touch, and cry over who gets to have the zucchini shaker. Most of the class is a thinly-veiled obstacle course, wherein the three-year-olds take total dominance over the not-quite-walkers; and for some younger children, my son included, the presence of competition translates into raw motivation. He’s what some call an “athletic” kid. Which of course, for someone like me, who would much rather write emo poetry in the corner than go anywhere near a ball sport, is what others call “karma.”
As the teacher sets up the smattering of multi-tiered stools and jump ropes, I see my son take to the corner of the ring, chewing his cud like a 300 pound wrestler. Within minutes, he will sprint from one mark to the next while other children teeter faithfully to the teacher’s instruction, singing along like Stepford wives. “Let’s stop and say the name of each instrument!” I say, knowing I’ve already lost. My kid is in the other room by now, probably searching the teacher’s bag for drugs, razor blades, plastic keys, goldfish crackers. I know I should have eaten more than a bite of yogurt before coming. Quite simply, I know I’m screwed.
There are many things about music class that I wish were mirrored in real life. For example, after the obstacle course is over, the teacher instructs the kids to take their place on the carpet for what she calls “rest time.” This is supposed to prepare them for preschool, where they are required to fall asleep for a couple hours each day while their instructors stare at their phones; which sets them up nicely, of course, for h̶e̶l̶l̶ elementary school, where if they fall asleep at any point, they will be fired. “That’s what we call irony,” I tell my son, as he squiggles one of his meaty arms down my shirt. It is rest time, and I feel I have arrived. I wonder why this isn’t a mandatory part of all classes, or concerts. Just a 5 minute breather. Just lie down, and the teacher will walk by with a little puppet who wants to snuggle you, and you can forget about the world. Or you can do what my son does, which is to bellow “I don’t WANT to rest!” while the others at least pretend to close their eyes, and then run over to try on all their shoes while they aren’t looking. To be fair, this is what I do every single time I am house-sitting for someone who wears a size 9, so I cannot blame him. Still, it occurs to me at this moment that it would be nice if the people who take all of our money for music class would also provide — I don’t know — coffee. Or better, mimosas. Just something, anything. Anything to get through the day.
The word “nuanced” comes to mind.
The time has come to sign up for a second round of music class, and I know without hesitation that I will. It doesn’t make sense, but as I’m realizing, very few things in parenthood really do. There is the impossible need to protect your kid from a world that is unceasingly random and cruel, and there is also the impulse to go bankrupt in order to send him to what he calls “xylophone class,” where, for just one moment more, he gets to be a baby. I can’t tell you exactly why the two are connected, but they are. And we are, every single time we walk out of class, and I ask him what his favorite part was, and we sing about bananas. We usually sit in the sun somewhere, eating a bagel; I get such an oxytocin rush that I forget the previous hour had, at its very best moments, felt like some creative form of torture. I forget the compulsive, and confused, part of me who feels I am in competition with other parents, or who wants my son to show up as anything other than what he truly is: wild, unruly. “Athletic.” A true original.
Perhaps everything that follows birth is just one long sequence of this duality: pain, ranging anywhere from monotony to absolute agony, only to be followed by amnesia, and the unshakeable biological impulse to do it all over again. Toddlerhood is a grind, and it’s long, but it’s fleeting. It’s like being inducted into a super messy, adorable cult, where someone has typically peed themselves, and there are always squeezy snacks. It’s hitting yourself over the head with a maraca, only to lie down and listen to a rainbow song while a puppet tickles your toes. I wouldn’t trade it.
And for those who think it is ridiculous to pay gobs of money to sit cross-legged and dissociate while my son listens to an (adorable) twenty-two year old play ukulele and sing — which I do for free every time I watch New Girl — I simply say this: we will remember you. When my son is a professional xylophone player, and I — his devoted mother — still join him on tour, frantically trying to keep him from stealing his instrument before the teacher says we are ready, don’t worry.
We will remember you.
