And Then There's Dad

The Jealous Type

by Gary Drevitch

I am living in a House of Secrets. You probably are, too. There are people under your own roof right now, speaking to each other in their own code, sharing their secret passions, and keeping you out of it.

It began to dawn on me when my oldest son was about three, and my wife and I began splitting the responsibilities for bringing him to nursery school each day. One morning, I was walking him to school and noticed that every few seconds, he counted something, then returned to our conversation. Finally, I asked him what he was doing. “Counting dogs. Mommy and I count dogs every morning. The most so far is 23.”
 
No kidding? Not being a pet person—OK, not being an animal person—I’d never paid any attention to the pooches being walked alongside us in the morning. But his mother did, and now she had him counting them. Another day, at dinner, he told her he wanted to talk more about what happened when people died, which had apparently been a hot topic for them over several walks to school.
 
Worthwhile as their talks clearly were, it was still disconcerting to hear that he was talking about such unexpected things with someone other than me, even if it was his mother. It’s like you’ve loaded your iPod Shuffle with all of your favorite retro synth pop, and then you turn it on the next day and every other song is a country ballad. It’s still a great piece of equipment, the sound is still clear, but you’d never even considered the possibility of playing country music on it.
 
When our kids are born, we consider them a blank canvas we can fill with our ideas and our passions, but for better or worse, we’re never painting alone. First, there are our spouses. My wife talks to the kids about herbs, about the oceans and about fantasy summer vacations, and when I get them back, they’re changed. And then they go to school and friends add candy-colored shades of Pokemon and “High School Musical” to the canvas. The more they hear, the more secrets they’re made privvy to, the more detailed the picture gets. As a parent, you can respond in two ways: Become jealous that your brushstrokes are no longer in the foreground, or realize that if all that was on the canvas was what you had drawn, there would be too many bare spaces for your child’s own good.
 
I imagine that, years from now, when the canvas is finished, part of the fun will be seeing what I can still see from our walks to nursery school. In the meantime, I’ll begrudgingly do the right thing, and share the brush.