By JONATHAN GIBBS

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Until I took part in the conception and subsequent birthing of a child, I had always kept children somewhat at a remove. I knew they had physiological accoutrements and the need to use those things in order to store and produce energy. I further understood they would eventually need to jettison and unload from their systems the byproducts of that industry. I knew, in other words, to let my nose tell me when to leave the room and summon the rightful owner – or at least operator – of the aforementioned young quasi-industrialist.
    But their psychological properties perplexed and frightened me out of the few wits I possessed. For one thing, they seemed to have special powers of insight. My nieces used to be able to tell when I went through heartbreak of some sort. I imagined they could see big, spiny roses bursting out from my chest, shedding moisture-laden velvety red petals only they could see. If I had to baby-sit them, I believed they would just as easily  detect any weakness in my resolve to oversee their behaviors, and that knowledge  could  result in their tying me up and going all feral and Wild Child on me. I feared them reenacting episodes of Bob, The Builder TV shows using grown-up power tools, or, worse in terms of familial relations, joining a pseudo-Jonestownian cult and committing revolutionary suicide underneath the swing set.
  

 

So when my son was born three years ago, it shook my belief system down to my very mitochondria. I now had the most important mission to which I had ever been assigned. But the responsibility of raising a child, and how to do so was a reality beyond my experience. With babysitting as my only experimental accessibility, I did not feel adequately equipped for the task.  
   Raising a child: The waters are deep and the currents are rough. There are thousands of books on the topic of how to do it right and millions – no trillions – of theories on how to do it right; and the fact is there is no right way. For members of the largest secret society on earth, parents, there is no more perplexing, rewarding, frustrating, validating, agonizing, joyous task we perform whilst we stalk this gray planet. Do it right and they leave you, never to visit as your range shrinks and your friends move away and you run out of things to say to interest your spouse. Do it wrong and they leave you, never to visit while your range shrinks in direct relationship to the distance away from your cardiologist, your friends move away and you’ve run out of things to say to your spouse. Or else they are so filled with loathing and anger they murder you in your sleep like a gang of Mau-Maus on a whites-owned plantation during the Boer War.
   There used to be the Dr. Spock way, and then the only other way was everything else. But now, given that we straddle the time/space continuum between the Y-generation and the Me-generation (resulting in the Why Me? -generation) we have a daunting array of lifestyle specific books with titles like “How to Love Your Child While Still Hating Yourself,” “Smother Your Child Into Codependency ,” “Turn off that Monitor and Set your Selfish Self First,” “While They Whine, You Win With Wine,” and “Passing on Neuroses: When Is Too Much Not Enough?”
   Obviously, book-writing professionals can’t provide a reliable and foolproof roadmap to child rearing, as all such books are basically theories in search of supporting facts.  You have to wing it to a degree, and when your child is flopped like an unstrung puppet on the counter about to perform a deed that would only work on a planet that lacks gravity, you can’t consult Dr. Baby Ruth for the proper phraseology and tone to impart to your teetering toddler. You have to push the theoretical physics aside and lurch to grab him while trying to freeze him into instant inertia with a shouted: “Yawp! Glop Dat!”
   You can take precautions to limit the scope and depth to which they can harm themselves. God punishes us for what we cannot imagine.  The obvious things like carving knives and ice picks need to be kept in places away from their reach plus a footstool plus a hand hold plus a lucky leap. Plan on their grasp exceeding their reach. That being said, I most likely err on the side of overprotective caution. Recently I caught myself in the middle of a monologue in which I instructed my fidgeting whilst feeding three-year-old son to: “Sit up straight on the stool with your back against its back. Get in the center and don’t let Tibet (our Bernese Mountain Dog) push your butt with his head. Keep your elbows on the countertop.” He looked at me, eyebrows making twin apostrophes as he tried to process all this information. I felt the need to explain my overcomplicated directions. “You never know when an earthquake will strike,” I added.
   I have no idea how it can to be that was crowned the Worrier King. My fear for his safety has been translated into my own behaviors around him. When we were visiting my mother recently, I had to change a light bulb in the ceiling and since he was sort of watching,  I kept a running commentary going about each step I was taking and the proper, safe way to perform this dangerous, though necessary, task. I let him see me turn off the light switch at the wall before cutting the power to the house at the circuit breaker that is well out of his reach. I then put on rubber-soled boots after making sure there was no standing water nearby that could conduct electricity (even of the static variety).  I crept up the stepladder taken out of the locked crawlspace in my mom’s garage with the new lightbulb in my work apron pocket and a pushbroom held business end to the floor for support. I then changed the bulb, but only after first wetting my index finger and rapidly poking the expired bulb to ensure not singeing my fingers. Then I told him never to do such a thing unless accompanied by his mommy or daddy.
  All this being said, I am still learning.  Maybe the Comanches had it right. Not the female-grabbing, man-killing, horse-stealing, baby-enslaving part of their daily grind (and in the spirit of political-correctness, I state that I am not judging them on these activities), but maybe they were on the right path when it came to child rearing. They saw children as being  special. Children were not punished physically, nor were they reprimanded by the parent or taught a lesson through the withholding of privileges, like not being able to take the family Palomino out on a raiding party. Instead, someone other than the parent, like a grandparent or sibling, would be recruited to scare their diapers off by putting on a sheet and pretending to be the boogey man to frighten the child into line. Grandparents did much of the day-to-day instructing in the ways of the tribe since the parents would frequently be busy with hunting or domestic chores. Being as old as many grandparents, this could work out for Nathan – and me. I can drop him off at day care and go gum lunch at the Senior Center. His children will be out of luck with me as a grandfather in that the only lesson I’ll be equipped to pass along by then is that one should not drop one’s hand into that puddle of drool in one’s lap while handling an electrical appliance.
  And so while we can’t go the Comanche way of child rearing, at least not entirely, we are developing out own style. And I’ll have plenty to say about what that style is next week.