Dash Parents

Our little boy is growing up and its likely that we will get him some god-parents.

But, I know a lot of people with things little Mr Baby Son can learn from them and can't learn from me.  I want them to be Dash Parents.  -parents.

He needs some business-parents, because Jo and I have no idea how business is done.  Really.  None.
He needs also some good-parents, for advice on how to choose to do what is good.
He also needs exercise-parents, and party-parents, because we are not strong in those areas.
A serious-work-father who can lead the boy to productivity and competence would be very handy.
Feel free to add to the list!

Abel

The readership should be interested to learn of the birth of my son, Abel, just over a week ago.  (That was where the north wind went – to get the sun - as the song has it.*)  Naming a boy Abel has some simple benefits (short, pronouncable) which are great strengths in conjunction with a fairly irregular surname.  There are some social complications (the popularity of the name Kane, the many rhymes).  There is a big social implication in the homonym, Able.  This works out as either a terrible burden of expectation, or a ludicrously hopeful piece of nominative determinism.  I will resist both of those.

I will however, read him ‘The Wizard-Knight’ by Gene Wolfe, which has a hero called Able who becomes a great Knight when he is old enough.  This is a story of the great virtue of courage, the virtue without which you can’t stick to your other virtues should you have any.  Able carries a magical item, a thread of the lives of others gifted him when he gained his majority in the middle world, below Sky and above Aelfrice. He is a changeling from our world, and the lives in the thread are our lives strained to breaking and never breaking.

I feel that Gene Wolfe has named his Able in an act of prophetic naming (as when one of the prophets names a son ‘Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’ meaning ‘the spoil flies, the prey hastens’, a boy who was a living sign of danger only getting larger).  He created his Able for an age in which courage is not honoured, because it has spent itself again and again tilting at windmills and other follies.  He is there in the imagination to help us carry our loads when we feel we aren’t able.  This is the meaning of his bad sleep, and exhaustion when the bowstring is nearby – we have drawn on him and he is drained.  (The whole book seems like it could be a letter for the man who lost his kid brother when he was young, some elaboration of the ‘He’s watching down on us’ way of being able to digest death.)

The second association is the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 3.  Abel is a herdsman, while Cain is an agriculturalist.  Abel sacrifices blood to God, which is acceptable, while Cain’s fruit platter does not cut it.  Cain is resentful, and God warns him, but he fights with Abel and kills him.  Abel’s blood ‘cries out to God from the earth’, and God asks Cain: ‘Where is your brother?’  Cain answers ‘Am I my brothers keeper?’

Abel is a good shepherd.  Cain, after declining to sacrifice blood to God, ends up killing his brother. The irony of his answer ‘Am I my brothers’ keeper?’ amplifies that he is no shepherd.

These are associations, but all proper names are just pointers.  The boy himself is the thing.

* 5 points for anyone who can identify the referent here.  As no points have been issued on this blog, you will rocket to the top of the readership leagues.

PS.  Still no progress on the Tristrapedia.  It will be improvised from here.

Theory for a Tristrapedia

Zygotsky:  "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals."

Tristrapedia

So what should be in the tristrapedia?  The main thing I've been reflecting on since I started listening to iTunesU is iTunesU, plus the supporting reading.  Probably a lot of stuff would be unintelligible to someone under twelve, but its the lectures, often first-year level, for undergrads with no backgound...

I read the Odyssey in Chinchilla on my Uncle's farm, which must have been when I was nine or ten. I did not learn the lesson I should have from Odysseus' cunning and ability to move from world to world, to hold his moods in tension and use them well.

Anyway, the point is, there's great feasts out there and I want young Elbetorte to misspend his youth less than I did.  This sounds like a sentence my father almost certainly said a lot when I was growing up, so I need to remember that I will fail at this, and that will turn out totally fine for both me and Elbetorte.

The other things I'm thinking about are the metabolism base-lining that apparently happens in the first few years of life, which set up what conditions you're going to cope with later.

Also resilience in the face of yelling.  In the world, people yell and fight and demand their own way, and its important to still function well, not think the world is coming to an end as I did.  I was a very scared little boy.