My 15-month old Andreas is a child of many obsessions. He’s obsessed with oranges. More commonly known as azas. We keep clementines around (calling them “oranges” for ease of use with him) and he takes every opportunity throughout the day to go to the kitchen demanding an “aza! aza!” If he can have one in each hand, all the better. After holding an “aza” for a while, he’ll bite into it, the juice all oozing down his arm. He grimaces at the bitter taste of the peel, but can also taste the good stuff inside. That’s usually when I intervene and peel the orange and give him a wedge or two, then try to hide it and distract him with something else. (Good luck to me with that!)
He’s obsessed with trucks, cars – anything on wheels – although firetrucks are especially exciting. Who needs television when the busy street in front of the house is entertainment enough? Tut! Tah! Wheel Fast! Van! And if a REALLY big and impressive vehicle drives by, he growls the word and says it extra loud. “BUUUSSSSS!”
He is obsessed with his older brother Abe. “Aba! Aba!” he says, whenever he hears the door open or someone come down the stairs. He asks for him dozens of times a day, and when we pass the door to his room we have to go and look and see if he is there. And when Abe finally gets home from school and sits down to build with blocks with him for a few minutes, you have never seen such glee come from such a little guy.
One of his other obsessions is the pet. That does not mean our tortoise, Dasher, but rather the trumpet. I assure you that we’ve done nothing to encourage this. “Pet!” he says when Dave picks up a trumpet. He’ll say “horn” when I get out my horn, but it’s more like “oh, you’re getting that thing out again….” Although he does like my stopping mute because, to him, it looks likes a little trumpet. When Dave plays, the real joy comes, and when Dave takes a little break we hear “Pet! More!”
We have a trumpet calendar that showcases a famous trumpet on each page. We currently have hidden it because, if we don’t, we would be reading it like a book all day long. “This is the Vincent Bach trumpet in C that Adolph “Bud” Herseth played.” [turn page] “This is the Kruspe Bass Trumpet in F played by Ernest Andauer of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” [turn page] “Here is a Schilke B-flat trumpet played by Bill Chase, one of the most famous lead players of all time….” Each page gets exuberant kicks of joy out of him and more shouts of “pet!”
All of this got me thinking about my own early obsessions, some of them sentimental and a little weird. For instance, after reading Anne Frank’s Diary in elementary school, I started keeping one myself just in case I died a tragic death. And then there was a prominent presence of the color purple in my wardrobe in the 7th grade.
Other fixations were less quirky: Laura Ingalls Wilder (I owned a prairie bonnet – and wore it), Mary Lou Retton (I was one of the countless girls who started gymnastics because of her influence), and Anne of Green Gables. These were a few of my childhood heroines, and, perhaps, obsessions.
The writer George Saunders recently visited the St. James School, a school in North Philadelphia (one of the most challenged areas of the city) attended by a small group of 5th and 6th graders from the neighborhood. I was unable to attend his talk, but read about it later. One girl asked him his opinion about why you have to go to school. His answer was, “Because there are people inside you who want to come out.” He went on to explain the importance of teachers and how they can help to shape the future of the students. He also talked with the audience about the question of why one reads books at all. In part, it’s to go back in time, he said, and to seek an alternate experience that makes us larger human beings. It’s to help us find our place in the world.
Is there are truer way to describe what books do for us? And what school can do for us? His description fits one of the things that music does best for us, too. But that is another blog post….
Saunder’s comments also reminded me that the expansion of experience was precisely the role that my early attachments played (perhaps excluding the color purple). Passion, resilience, and determination are just a few of the lessons that Laura, Mary Lou and Anne taught me. Though many heroes have been added to the ranks since I was in elementary school, these women were key in helping me start to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, and what kind of possibilities life might hold for me.
I know Andreas’ obsessions will no doubt change very quickly, but I wouldn’t have a problem with him always loving his older sibs, music, and citrus fruit. Methods of transportation are fine too, especially since we’ll be on the go this summer. A fascination with planes could be a very good thing. It’s not such a bad start to a life’s line-up of heroes that will fuel his imagination.
