EVERYTHING
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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
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I was already falling hopelessly behind my father in the contest for my son's affections when the old man brought out The Trumpet. My grandmother gave my father The Trumpet sometime around 1950. It is tarnished and dented and its valves barely work. It requires, at this point, a pair of Gillespian lungs to get so much as a toot out of it. It is, for my 3-year-old boy, a thing of utter beauty. When I was a kid, The Trumpet hung in our den on the pink-brick façade of a wall-sized fireplace. It came down every now and then for a raspy bit of reveille from my dad or a tortured beep-beep from my big brother or utter silence from me. But mostly it hung on the fireplace, and we understood that it was not a functional thing but the earthly husk of long-gone music. My son has no such (dis)illusions. The Trumpet is the only trumpet he's ever seen, so whatever it does is what a trumpet is meant to do: The bronchial wolf-howl of my father playing taps is a pure musical miracle, shedding a sort of sanctity on both trumpet and trumpeter. It was about three months ago that my father, without telling me, raided the distant reaches of his closet for The Trumpet. At the time, my son had just mastered the dark art of The Sarcastic Response. I'd say, "I think you need to go to bed now." He'd say, in the identical tone, "I think I need to watch more 'Winnie the Pooh.'" I'd say, "I want you to go to bed." He'd say, "I want you to go away." At such moments, I had the unbearable urge to sulk like a picked-on sibling. Things only got worse when the boy started looking me in my limit-setting eyes each night and saying, "I want to go to Grandpa's." I am, of course, perfectly aware that my son's grandfather is a Very Good Guy, but nobody wants to be usurped by the previous generation. "When I was his age," I told my wife, "I idolized my dad." "Well," she said, "now he idolizes your dad." That wasn't quite what I was looking for. I lay awake for long hours at night wondering why my son wanted to be with my father more than he wanted to be with me. Then one day, as we clicked the boy into his car seat for a visit to his grandparents, he said, "I want to play Grandpa's trumpet!" "So that's it!" I thought. "The old fella had a trick up his sleeve! A sophisticated version of slipping the kid chocolate!" Triumphant, I drove my family to my folks' house. But the mood slipped away at the front door. Before giving Grandpa a hug or high five, my son ran to the shelf where The Trumpet was stowed. My father and I shared a shrug, and, defeated by a 50-year-old coil of brass, we went to fetch The Trumpet. Greg Blake Miller is a writer and college instructor in Las Vegas. The UC Irvine graduate is a longtime contributor to Churm Publishing, Inc. |
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