Good Times

Last evening as I was eating a belated and solitairy omelette (the Missus has the flu and had gone to bed already), the soon-to-be ten-year-old suddenly appeared in the kitchen, wide-eyed. She explained that she had checked out a library book of scary folktales, had read a few of them, and was now - in her words - "seriously freaking out" about being alone in her room. Could she stay with me for a little while and talk?

From earliest days, we've always been bedtime nazis: eight o'clock and you're in your room. Period. Whether you sleep or not is up to you, but we don't want to see you again. And overall, this has served us extremely well, as we've totally avoided all those horror stories about kids who won't go to bed before midnight, and then only after a lengthy and labor-intensive ritual on the part of Mom and/or Dad. Furthermore, all the gels have developed excellent sleeping habits, usually conking within five minutes of the end of bedtime story and the ritual drink of water.

Of course, the eldest Llama-ette isn't a baby anymore (indeed, she's not that far off from the Big Change) and we've gradually become more lax with her, letting her stay up to watch ball games or movies on weekend nights. However, we're still pretty strict on school nights, particularly as she is usually quite hard to pry out of bed in the morning.

Thinking of all this but recognizing that this seemed to be a special circumstance, I invited her to sit down with me. The very first thing she wanted to know about the stories she had read was were they true?

"Well, not really," I said. "Folk tales come from an awful lot of different sources. Some were invented to explain things that uneducated people couldn't understand. Some developed as warnings of a practical (don't go into the woods on the other side of the mountain) or moral (don't desecrate hallowed ground) variety. Some tales, as Tolkien said, simply grew in the telling."

As an example, I cited the case of Vlad the Impaler and his gradual evolution from ferocious Balkan warlord fighting the Turk into the most famous vampire. But I also pointed out how this often worked with good people, heroes, as well, including men like George Washington and Davy Crockett.

"So you see," I concluded, "it's most often the case with tales of this sort that they hold a kernal of truth in them somewhere, but are usually not factually accurate. So don't worry about it. Oh, and maybe you shouldn't read any more scary stories for a while."

The gel pondered this for a bit and then said, "You know, just talking things out with you like this really helps. Thanks, Dad. Say, could we go listen to some music for a little while?"

Well. How could I say no to that? We proceded down to Robbo's Former Fortress of Solitude and ran off, in succession, a quirky little string concerto by Telemann called "The Frogs", Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 4 and Mozart's 4th Horn Concerto. The gel had done a reading assignment on Frederick the Great and Prussia this week: I widened her eyes by remarking that C.P.E. Bach, son of the great J.S. Bach and Godson of Telemann, was a musician in Frederick's service and his teacher as well. I also made her laugh with the story of how Mozart wrote the horn piece for a friend of his who later owned a cheese shop and how Mozart filled the autograph copies with all sorts of silly jokes and comments to make his friend laugh while trying to play them. (See, some fathers entertain their kids with magic tricks. Others talk about sports. Me, I pull out useless pieces of historickal trivia.)

By then, teh gel was completely relaxed and went to bed without a fuss. And this morning, she woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. "Thanks again for last night, Dad," she said, giving me a big hug as I shaved, "Because of our talk and the music, I had a great sleep."

Aaaah.

Ya know, tomorrow happens to be my 43rd birthday. I've long resigned myself to the fact that I'm never going to be a Great Man, no captain of industry, no leader in some field of arts or sciences, nobody who anyone in particular is ever going to remember outside my immediate family and friends. However, if within that small circle I am remembered as a Good Man, well, that will be a sign that I've led a worthy life.