My Son, the Singer

When I began this blog, I had in mind that it would be multipurpose, one of those being to help organize my thoughts as well as some of my memories of Jared as he grows. I've got so many piles of photos, cards, keepsakes and calendars as well as little scraps of paper with notes jotted down, notes that I say to myself I'll write down all neat and orderly like a good mommie should in an album or scrapbook one day when I get time. (Meanwhile, the piles keep growing taller. )


One memory that I don't want to forget is his fondness for music. While he seems to for the most part think he's too cool to dance, my son has been singing since he was two or three months old. Some of the photos of him during his naming ceremony back in October 2006 do, in fact, show him with his cottony hair and velvety skin and mouth frozen while holding the note of song. During his first year, he and I would be out shopping and he would be singing at the top of his lungs in such a way that other shoppers would track us down in our aisle to get a look at the child whose voice carried from one corner of the store to another (which made me sometimes call him O Puxador, like Neguinho da Beija Flor and other singers who stand on top of floats bellowing out carnaval theme songs, no need for a mic). Granted, the stores where this would happen were always small stores, but still I thought it was funny. Even more funny was that when I enrolled the child in Music Together he spent more time investigating the room than he did actually singing or playing instruments.
When some of these people would, perhaps innocently, say to me that my son is destined to be a singer, it seemed laden with restrictive assumptions about the heights a black child should expect to reach. So, in response I would say that he could very well end up being a singer but might also be an orator or a host of other things that require vocal expressiveness.

In addition to his own original tunes, Jared's Fall 2008 repertoire includes:

Old MacDonald

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Yes, Jesus Loves Me

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Twinkle, Twinkle

Frere Jacques


Of course, mommie can't wait to see what comes next in the little boy's songbook.

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Playsuit image from Stardust Kids

My Little River Jared

For lots of people in lots of places, giving a baby a good name is as essential as getting good prenatal care. And so, my "bone memory" told me that I had to pick a powerful name for my son.

I selected his middle name first, and there's no mystery about what it means. "I am with you." With all the challenges necessary to face down, I-- no-- we all needed constant reminders of the promise that the Divine has whispered from the dawn of time to now. "I am with you."

Eventually, the name Jared came to me. I kept it close to the vest, not entirely certain that it would make the final cut. I checked, double-checked and cross checked it in all of the baby name books which repeatedly told that in Hebrew it means "to descend" and "king." I took that "descend" part to mean "to be born of," period. The books were leaving me hanging and what they offered seemed to have implied ellipses trailing behind. To descend...To descend from what? Or who? A little more back story, please, folks!

At one point, I came across a very informative book that added a layer telling that in Greek Jared/Yared means "rose." It brought to mind that Rumi poem that says something like "that which God said to the rose he said to my heart." Not too many boys wanna know that their mamas named them after flowers, but I reasoned that Jared would be my rugged rose. Mighty like a Rose, that old plantation lullaby-- 'cept with an Oscar Brown, Jr./Nina Simone "Brown Baby" kind of feeling. I rolled with it.

Near the time of baby's due date, his daddy's daddy-- a Christian evangelical pastor with Asante roots-- wanted to know my reasons for selecting Jared as the first name (actually, a lot of people wanted to know exactly why.) Grandpa Kwabena then set about combing the Old Testament looking for passages that told a little bit more about the mysterious original bearer of this name. What's this Jared's claim to fame? Was he wise like Solomon? A worker of wonders like Moses? What he found was one simple line mentioning Jared: he was the father of Enoch and Methuselah. That was about that.

We live in Atlanta. Now, anybody who lives here or somewhere like D.C., New York or Philly knows well the Five Percent types who take pride in peering into the deeper, obscure meaning of things. (Not saying this to 'dis, or in a disparaging way. Okay, I am poking a teeny bit of fun. But mostly wanting simply to draw a clear picture for those who know.) So there was this one Five Percent, break-it-down-to-its-very-last-compound kind of brother originally from New York and who works at one of the health food stores near our house. When Jared was about year old, the brother shared that my baby's name meant "The Last." Now, when Brother Man said this, the look on his face and the kind of hesitant way in which he offered his reading sounded a tad ominous. (If it was an old-time soap opera or bad movie we would have heard the grinding of a dramatic organ in the back-- da, da, DAAAAAHH) Who's to say that Jared is going to be my "wash belly? So, I shrugged the comment off and kept a-stepping, knowing that I'd cloaked my child with a talawah name.

Now, here I am-- not quite two years after selecting the name Jared. Being the forever-curious mama that I am I just happened to poke around a little and find confirmation of what Spirit whispered to me early on. Do allow me to share:

Jared in Hebrew is Yarod. Yarod relates to the Hebrew verb "Yarden," which does indeed mean "to descend" as all the baby books noted. However, this descend doesn't simply mean to be born from. In the much more poetic sense of the word, it means "to flow." To flow like a river, as in "Roll, Jordan, Roll." Like blessings or a cup running over.

Yar-Dan is the name of the Jordan River in Hebrew. Also, Yardenit means a baptismal place. Yar-Dan. Yardan. Yarden. Jordan. Think of the expression, "Where there is water there is life." A river being a place of cleansing, renewal and a source of nourishment. Rivers are also avenues of transport with important civilizations having flourished along river banks. And, incidentally, in Arabic the name Yardan also means "king."

Am I sounding a bit Five Percent? It's all good, because now this story is full. And as Bob says, it satisfies my soul.

Holding On, Letting Go

I've heard people say that having a baby is akin to seeing your heart walk around outside your body. This implies that our children are one of the few things intimately and profoundly ours.
Then there's the Zen-like thing that Sweet Honey in the Rock has sung about: Our children are not our children. Hard pill to swallow, but true that.

I do see my son as the baby that I'm presently responsible for caring for. I am also looking down the road and sending a "prayer covering" to ensure that he becomes a make-it-happen kind of man of vision, confidence, love and humility. I want him to explore both the outer world and the interior of his own mind and soul. Already, my baby boy is well on his way.

As so many made sure to remind me during pregnancy and just after his birth, he's growing so fast! I love to see how strong, determined and alert he is. Always has been. Just that now he's getting coordinated enough to show it. As amazed and proud as I am to see him blossom-- can I be real?-- I hope that the man that he becomes has the same care and concern for his mama as his mama does for him. So, looks like I have the potential to be one of those clingy, pathetic types of mamas. God help us both!

I was watching a program on The Learning Channel last night where a 30-something woman and her silver-haired husband were playing with their infant and marveling at how big he'd gotten in such a short time. This made the woman want to have another baby. I know that feeling. Most women know that tugging kind of urge that starts in some nether-region of the brain and tugs on the heart strings and the fallopian tubes and comes when they see a pregnant woman or a young woman with a trail of young'uns traipsing behind. But even if one has twenty children, at some point all of them are going to grow. And go. What this speaks to is the need for us as parents, as humans, as developing souls to work on lessening our urge to cling, dealing with our fears of being alone. But when we get caught up on our spiritual work we're supposed to discover that we're never really alone, right?

So, now: How can we both nurture and resist our urge to be overprotective, encourage our children to honor their roots, origins and family and yet encourage step confidently out into the world? How do we help them to find their way to the wellspring of power within and gain a sense of community responsibility and inter-dependence?

Here's what one woman has to say:
So The Torah Is a Parenting Guide?