The problematic drum teacher

NOTE: I am posting this because my husband thought I was a bit hard on Mr. W. So I agreed to drop the picture and the first name in case any of the five people who read this blog or a random person flipping through blogs might happen to know Mr. W. I wouldn't want to be sued for slander or anything.

Mr. W., Gabriel's drum teacher for the past two and a half months, might be prototypical of what you would find a any given music/instrument store around the country. Burned out rocker who never made it big in ANY of the countless bands he has graced his presence with. Slightly chubby, mass of frizzed out hair sticking out from under his baseball cap, and dresses like he never quite matured past the age of fifteen. Mr. W., master of mediocrity with dozens of instruments, but claims his specialty is drums and especially guitar.

All of this I expected. I also expected, and was told, about the problems in teaching someone so young. The short attention span, the fact that some days will be good and some bad. That Gabriel won't retain much from the lesson and it's up to me to get him to practice the tiny pieces of infinite wisdom that Mr. W. has tried to relay in our 30 minutes.

So that is one problem, that the infinite wisdom doesn't seem all that great. He has Gabriel do alot of counting, and moving drumsticks from one drum to another. I'm sure all of that improves coordination. At first he had a music book that he was trying to get Gabriel to follow, but Gabriel didn't get it and now the book is gone. I can tell that Mr. W. is making this up as he goes along. He takes every opportunity to let me know how cool it is that we still have Gabriel in classes, because every other time he started teaching someone this young the parents yanked them back out after a month. He thinks Gabriel is progressing, albeit slowly.

My other problems with Mr. W. stem from his manic depressive behavior and totally inappropriate comments that he throws out here and there. He likes to brag about all of his years of martial arts, and how he sometimes used those skills when raising his stepsons ("I always ask them if they wondered how I could hit them in the face without it hurting - I was trying to teach them something, not hurt them.") He asked me last Monday if we had watched the Summer Slam the night before. And I said, "Isn't that a wrestling match? No, we don't really watch wrestling in our house." I think he only asked me so that he could tell me how important wrestling is in his house. And maybe argue with me about why people hate or don't understand wrestling. The worse thing that happened was when we were going through the week before we lost Molly, and I stupidly told Mr. W. that we were having a rough day at home because our dog was sick. He said, "Growing up in the country we had to learn how to shoot dogs at a young age." And started to tell me some stories on that subject. Luckily Gabriel was already piddling around on the drums so I don't think he heard anything. But the most awful part was that I didn't react to this, the awfulness of it and the total inappropriateness of it, until I was back home telling Jav about it.

I have vowed never to return to Mr. W. at least 4 times.

But the thing is, Gabriel loves his lessons. Mr. W. is a big kid. He makes Gabriel laugh all through the class. He repeats the same corny jokes every week. And Gabriel loves him. And after the music book disappeared, I have to give Mr. W. a little credit for figuring out exactly how to get Gabriel to focus during most of the lesson. Gabriel's reward if all goes well during the first 25 minutes of class is that he gets to jam with Mr. W. while he's playing his guitar for the last five minutes of class. I could try to find another place that gives lessons to a kid his age. I could try to find someonewho's had more experience with getting through to kids. But I wonder if Gabriel would have as much fun as he's having with Mr. W. He keeps wanting to go back for more.

How can anyone compete with a jam session at the end of each lesson?

Namesakes

I have never shared with anyone the story of how Jav and I came up with Gabriel's name. Many months before I became pregnant we were headed down for a long weekend at South Padre. The drive gets to be a little tedious pretty quick after you get through San Antonio. We decided to go through the alphabet, letter by letter, to find baby names we both liked. Which turned out to be difficult. By the time we got to "G" we only had agreed on two or three names. I was having trouble thinking of names that started with "G". Then I remembered we had just watched The Motorcycle Diaries, based on Che Guevara's motorcycle trip through South America. And I THOUGHT the lead actor's name was Gabriel. Jav said he liked the name too, and it moved to the top of our boy name list and stayed there. And the rest is history.

However, the actor's name is not Gabriel, but Gael. Still a very cool name. But I don't think we would've even considered it as a possibility. A little too different. I think I must have gotten confused due to the actor's full name, Gael Garcia Bernal, being so close to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So Gabriel is named after a Mexican actor names Gael by way of a famous Columbian author named Gabriel. Oops.

Later on, once we were officially pregnant and thinking seriously about names, we also liked it because it translated to Spanish, and because it was biblical. It translates to "the strength of God". Gabriel was one of the archangels. Gabriel's middle name was Jav's paternal grandfather's name, Valentin. Which I think is beautiful. We really debated about it, worrying that he might be teased. But then decided we needed to give him a strong enough character to not pay any attention to such silliness. I haven't seen many pictures of Valentin, so don't know if Gabriel favors him or not. Sometimes Jav picks up on a personality trait or a way that Gabriel moves that he says reminds him of his grandfather. I wonder, though, if we look for these things a little harder BECAUSE he is named after him.

Joel was not even on our list of names at first. At some piont we added it, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I liked Zachary, and Jav liked Nicholas or Benjamin. We narrowed our list down to 10 names, and were going to decide and start letting family know by labor day weekend. Sometime over the summer, I woke up one day and realized I really liked Joel. I haven't known many Joels in my life,which made it more appealing. I mentioned it to Jav and he said he was still thinking. By the beginning of August we both loved it and never looked back. It was derived from Hebrew, just like Gabriel. It means "The Lord is willing", or "the will of God". It translates to Spanish. It is a strong name, and suits him perfectly.

Joel's middle name is Terrell, after my paternal grandfather's first name. I didn't get a much of a chance to get to know my grandfather very well. He died of a heart attack when I was eight years old. I called him Pawpaw. The things I remember come from the times my brother and I stayed with he and my grandmother when my parents went out on Saturday nights. He was quiet and gentle, with a warm smile, curly hair, glasses and a big round face. He had strong hands and would let me ride "horsey" on his legs while we watched Hee Haw, Porter Waggoner, and the Grand Ole Opry. He was the calm steadiness to my grandmother's frenetic, never ending energy, a pairing that sounds a little too familiar in this house now.

And he is the only person, on either side of our families, that Joel resembles.

Seems we may have hit the nails on the heads in choosing both names for both boys. Hopefully they will be happy with them too!

Rain Baby returns!

OK, I know it's a coincidence. Probably.

But yesterday afternoon, while in a desperate state due to weathering day after day of drought conditions and 105+ degree weather, I decided to ask God something. Not for rain specifically, but to invoke the power of my Rain Baby again.

When I was pregnant with Joel, we had the wettest summer in my lifetime. Then after he came out, we had more snow that winter than we had ever had. But after that he lost his powers. I've thought about it a couple of times during this drought, but not seriously enough to actually do anything.

Joel and I had the house to ourselves yesterday afternoon, so I sat him on my lap. I started my chant, Rain Baby, Rain Baby, please come back.... I rubbed his head, his back, his tummy and feet. I hugged him and lifted him high above my head. I swung him back and forth, my chant growing louder and louder. He, of course, loved it and was laughing uncontrollably. But I was very serious.

Then, early this morning, Joel finally decided he'd had enough tossing and turning for one night and cried enough to get me out of bed. While brushing my teeth, I heard a sound outside and thought it was wind. But on my way down the hall to get Joel, I glanced outside the back windows and saw it. Beautiful rain, slow and steady, glistening in the lights. Hallelujah, praise to the heavens!!!

I picked up Joel and went to the back porch. We pulled out a chair and sat and breathed it in. We listened, we laughed, I came close to crying with blessings of thankfulness and humility. But I was mostly filled with wonder about the power of the Rain Baby.

I will remember this morning for the rest of my life.

Swimming!

Here's a clip of Gabriel's last swim lesson a week ago. The quality is terrible, the beginning is all over the place because I'm holding Joel in my lap. But my son is swimming, on his own, in the deep end of the pool. And if I hadn't cut it off, we could have seen him stop and take a breath on his back, then continue swimming all the way to the other side. I am so very proud of him!

The screamie meamie

That would be Joel, of course. The loudest 20-month old who can clear out a space around our table in a restaurant faster than you can say, "let's just sit at the bar!"

He has natural rhythm, maybe even more than Gabriel, and has some fierce dance moves. Gabriel loves to dance, but still dances like a toddler boy - no arms, stiff hips, mostly feet. I guess that's how alot of adult boys dance too - hee hee hee. Joel moves his arms very gracefully, stopping just shy of showing us his jazz hands. He loves to squat waaaaaaaayyyyyyy down and lift his arms up on the ending note of a song. Drama. You could even call it interpretive. I told Jav he just might end up on Broadway. Or as a mime. Boy, did that get me a look. Which got him a "we would be ok with that though, right?"

Joel has just started singing too. He sort of hums along with the melody, not really in key but perfectly in rhythm. He picks up the drum sticks as soon as his brother puts them down. I caught him today playing rhythms of threes, alternating from the drum to the cymbal. I'm not making this up.

I'll hear one of them playing one of our three keyboards (toy, electronic, and upright), and think to myself, "that's Gabriel" because the touch is very light, no banging, and very exploratory. It's usually Joel. When I think about money that will need to be spent in the future, I can't help but think we need to foot the bill for music lessons for both of these boys. They seem to drink, eat and breath music. Which makes me very proud!

His incessant babble continues, but is starting to sound more like real words. He's learned to say "NO" very emphatically to any question, whether he means it or not. Gabriel finds this very amusing and loves to keep asking him questions that he knows that Joel should be answering "yes" to. "Do you want ice cream for dessert, Joel?" "Nnnnnnnnoooooo" (He says it, of course, very dramatically.) If he's been playing for awhile and hasn't seen me, he starts yelling "Mama" over and over again, and wanders through the house until he finds me. Then he gives me a big hug and a belly kiss.

Here he is, just being Joel.