Our Toddler's Teachings in Pop Culture
Even though the daughter still doesn’t understand the concept of time and days, she somehow seems to just know when it’s Friday night – I guess that’s ‘cause the feelin’s right and the Tuesday house knows how to do it. Party like thirty-something parents with a toddler, that is. And let me tell you: the whole thing may last for only an hour (if even), but we go hard, shit is lit. Friday night means saying, no way! to our usual dinner etiquette and eating in front of the TV instead. No plates or cutlery allowed here, it’s pizza straight from the tray and, if we’re feeling fancy, onto napkins. As for our traditional Friday night viewing, it’s whatever la jefa requests and, fortunately for us, it’s not CocoMelon or Gabby’s Dollhouse. Please. Our kid has taste. As soon as she’s dragged her high-chair scraping and screeching from the dining and into the living room, her eyes light up in anticipation and she starts bossing us around with a comical sternness quite like the Taskmaster himself – her favourite (adult) show.
Everything they say about having a baby is annoyingly true – the time really does fly, and when you’ve just found your groove and have started adapting to one phase, on comes the next. Last year brought us many unforgettable firsts: her first steps, her first real-life encounter with family she’d only ever met on FaceTime, her first concert and her first words, of which there are now many across three languages. So many in fact that, on some mornings, when our eyes are still bloodshot with sleep deprivation, and our brains are still slowly grinding into gear, it can take us a second to decipher which language she has woken up to. That varies from day to day. If she’s saying a word in German and it’s taking us too long to react, she’ll translate to English or Spanish. I swear to you, sometimes I can literally hear her eyes roll like, mama, get with the program. And I’m like, woman, what do you expect? You had me up at three-hour intervals and I’m pretty sure the positions you’re forcing me to sleep in are somehow clamping the blood flow to my brain. But, not-so-secretly, I’m proud. Of how well and kindly she communicates, easily adapting to her linguistic environment, and expressing that beautiful spirit of hers with interesting word choices and emphasis.
Her first and my favourite word of hers, is Mama. I do not tire of hearing it, feeling it, being rewarded this, the best title, the best role, I’ve ever had. Even after hearing it a gazillion times in under five minutes, usually when I am trying to get something done – usually for her Highness. Even when the pitch gets higher, more persistent and angrier. Her favourite word is probably amarillo, Spanish for yellow. I think she likes the flow of it, and she generally tends to like long words. Her go-tos, however, are a little more abstract and used for different situations of great importance to her. They encompass the things and places that make her feel happy, safe and loved. One is her reference to music – live, on-screen, through the speakers or her cat-eared headphones. Another is a little more complex in that, it is mainly used for one thing, but has also become a sort of safe-word. And the third, is what she has come to associate with out-of-the-ordinary, quality family time. Curiously, there is one thing all these words share in common: they are all linked to pop-culture. Music, literature and TV we have become newly aware and/or more appreciative of thanks to the teachings of our toddler.
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I first came to know the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s as a content writer for Fashionomics Africa. One of the first blog posts I wrote for the platform was focused on Adichie’s Project Wear Nigerian. This ongoing project sees the author, speaker and fashion icon wearing only Nigerian designers to public events worldwide, as a way to champion not just their brands and creations, but “different layers of the industry, from the button-sewer to the delivery person.” I was incredibly intrigued by her – her style, her confidence, her writing. Even those short Instagram posts left me wanting more; I saw a powerful kind of honesty, a sincereness to her words. She’s not going to try and sell you something unless she truly believes in it herself. As a sucker for non-fiction, I was thrilled to find her essays on feminism and immediately ordered copies of We Should All be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.
As per our (nuclear) family Witchmas tradition, each year we select twelve women who inspired us with their art, and honour them by giving them a place in our tree. We create little ornaments featuring their portraits, and they shine on our living room as brightly as the fairy lights, adding an extra layer of divine feminine magic to the season. Chimamanda has been on our tree since the year I first read her. Last year, as I was storing away all the decorations, the daughter somehow got a hold of the Chimamanda ornament and there was no chance of extracting it from her stubborn claws. I get it; the portrait we had chosen for her – created by Vix Harris – features her in her trademark colourfully sophisticated style, against a blueish, greenish background, and a blouse in popping amarillos. Paired with her warm, dazzling smile, it’s a looker, alright, and you just want to keep on looking. Especially if you’re a toddler and have all the time in the world. We finally reached a compromise – we hung it on a candle holder in the bedroom, for her to look at it every night before going to bed. Only, that night, I decided to treat myself to a candlelight bubble bath and moved said candleholder to the bathroom and placed it on a little bookshelf we keep in there…
So, instead of looking at Chimamanda every night before going to sleep, the daughter started taking the ornament from the candleholder every time she went to the toilet. Each time, she would study it as though it were the first time she saw it, clearly fascinated by this woman. I would say her name and she would repeat – her version of – it, emphasizing the syllables: Chi-ma-mama. It became a daily occurrence and, before we knew it, her term for doing important business. A fun one to explain to friends and family members, I’ll tell you that much. And I’ve often thought about how Chimamanda herself would feel about the fact that her unique name has become synonymous with toilet-going. She might take offense at first. But once I’d go on to explain that, the bathroom and – as weird as it may sound – the moments we share in there are the daughter’s safe space, her refuge, perhaps the idea would become what I consider to be quite flattering.
It’s not just a word – OK, name – the daughter uses when nature calls; it’s one she uses when she needs a time-out from the world, when she needs to retreat, albeit for a few minutes, to her own little world, with her fairy lights, her books and yes, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the woman she has become so taken by. It has become her safe-word too, the one she uses when she’s afraid, overwhelmed or simply in need of solitude. It is a request, a space we never deny her – in whatever context she is asking for it – and that, I feel, speaks volumes of our bond with this tiny human and the big words she has come to love as much as the things they represent. Hence, Chimamanda – the “term” – has become a part of our everyday vocabulary, our familect, and the person has become part of our Witchmas tradition, has inhabited our bookshelves – and currently my nightstand by ways of Americanah – and accompanies us on many a full moon night when the only thing that seems to soothe both my daughter’s restless energy and my creative frustrations are watching her (TED)talks and interviews.
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Once the daughter had mastered mama, the names of our dog and two cats and finally – and much to his dismay – “papa”, she learned the word “this”. A commodious one to have in her repertoire, of course, because it suddenly opened a whole new world of asking (pointing) and receiving to her. One night in July, as we were getting ready for dinner, the husband put the latest Tiny Desk concert on to listen to in the background. It was Belle and Sebastian, who had squeezed their eight-headed ensemble into the famous office space to present their latest album, A Bit of Previous. At this point, we honestly didn’t have much of a previous with the band other than recognizing a few of their tracks from Tiger Milk, and finally being able to put faces to the reference in How I Met Your Mother. Little did we know that, on this fateful evening, this household would turn into one of serious Belle and Sebastian fans – with the smallest member of the family being the biggest. And it all started with her word of the moment: this.
You see, while we were slurping on our gazpacho and easy summer randoms for some added crunch, the daughter was apparently far more tuned into what Stuart Murdoch was talking about between songs, than what her parents were discussing. So, when it became time to introduce the band, and he gave a special thanks to Chris Geddes who “really was the only person who had a handle on this whole thing and our band and was like, ok, we need to do this, this, this and this” – the daughter lost it. Her eyes grew wide, her whole face broke into an overawed smile, she excitedly pointed to the TV and repeatedly exclaimed, this, this, this! As in, that’s my word, this is my jam! From that moment on, she started requesting this, this, this several times a day – initially by waddling up to the TV, pointing and calling out the triple-magic-word, nowadays by getting a hold of the firestick - no matter how well we (think) we hide it – and telling Alexa to, “YouTube, this, this, this”. I would like Belle and Sebastian and the team at NPR’s Tiny Desk to know that my daughter is responsible for at least half of the views on YouTube, if not more.
For the past six months we’ve worked ourselves through the band’s entire discography, and have won some new (old) favourites along the way including If You’re Feeling Sinister, Dear Catastrophe Waitress (extra brownie points for having an amarillo album cover) and Days of Bagnold Summer. We’re currently easing the daughter into the new album, Late Developers which dropped last week. We’ve watched various live performances by now, including their visit at KEXP and their 2015 performance at Lollapalooza in Berlin. But when the daughter has her say – and she usually does – it simply isn’t worth the Unnecessary Drama of trying to push anything other than the Tiny Desk performance on her. While Working Boy in New York City and Judy and her Dream of Horses are definitely her best-loved songs from this concert, she’s also taken a hilarious liking to Stuart saying, “it’s so nice to see people” – a line she’ll now exclaim at random moments during dinner or in the car. She also likes to repeat, “with that song” in a full-on Scottish accent.
The performance is often the first thing we see/hear in the morning, and Judy the last thing we sing to her at night. Carrying her through the streets of Seville after attending her (third) concert this fall, her warm body snuggled against mine and her favourite band acting as the soundtrack to the ending of a glorious night spent with friends, is a memory I will carry with me forever. Not just because of the moment it represented, but the peacefulness she transmitted as we walked along. And Murdoch, Martin, Jackson and co. had a lot to do with it. They accompany us everywhere and gladly – because Belle and Sebastian are to my girl what a pacifier is to other toddlers. Their music is her blankey. NPR’s Tiny Desk is her second home – a place she recognizes, a backdrop she can relax into, filled with gadgets she delights in, jokes she understands. Jokes her papa and I know verbatim. Banter that makes her wonderfully happy whilst, at the same time, having a calming effect on her. It’s so endearing to watch.
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It's Wednesday today, and on our way back from messy play at a local family café, the daughter and I stopped to pick up a few things ahead of the weekend. As I said before – we like to do our Friday’s right and that means avoiding any last-minute errands if at all possible. And so, we joked our way through the fruit section and sang along to the embarrassingly catchy Carrefour ad to the tune of “Daddy Cool” as we grabbed a bottle of Ginger Ale from which to make Mama’s weekend mocktail. When we finally reached the cooling section and I reached for the pizza dough, she pointed at it and enthusiastically shouted, no way! This is the term she uses for our end-of-week tradition, that started one Friday night when both the husband and I were completely and utterly knackered after a relentless week, and neither of us had the will to cook, prepare, clean – none of that whole damn thang. Instead, we ordered pizza, and decided we were actually going to give watching one of our shows a try.
We’re two years behind on everything, even our absolute top picks: Russian Doll, Succession, Euphoria, Better Things… just writing this makes me wanna cry. But these shows simply cannot be watched distractedly or in the half-awake-half-asleep state I typically find myself in when I actually get some time on the couch. They deserve my fullest attention. Plus, with the exception of Better Things, these definitely aren’t appropriate for viewing with the daughter; not even as background noise while boobing. Taskmaster, on the other hand, felt like a good fit and seeing as this was another show we were very behind on, we went for it, starting with Season 13’s Shoe Who. At first the daughter was mainly interested in the pizza that had arrived by then, and ensuring she vigorously clapped along every time the audience on TV did. For the rest, I think she found the most entertainment in watching us watch Ardal O’Hanlan, Sophie Duker, Bridget Christie and co.
…and then came a task involving a whole bunch of shoes – something the daughter is very fond of – in all styles and colours, though her preference definitely lies with boots and hausschuhe [1](as opposed to “schuhe-schuhe”[2]). This immediately caught her attention and she watched the contestants with great interest as they picked up, examined and discarded shoes. She commented on their colours and mimicked them throwing sandals and clogs out of the window (making a sneeze-like sound to convey the throwing part). Needless to say, this task was right up her street – shoes, throwing things, lots of colours, perfection. When it finally came to Chris Ramsey’s turn and he was made to perform the task while repeatedly calling out “no way!” in his charming Geordie accent, that was it – that absolutely made the daughter’s night. She now had another catchphrase and a new accent to yell it in, arms outstretched and with the kind of spark we should all be ringing in the weekend with.
Since then, whenever the TV is on and Taskmaster is visible in our viewing history, she does the little knee-bend she does when she’s about to share something fabulous, and goes full-on Geordie. That spontaneous night of wellness-parenting was such a success, we officially instated an easy-going Friday rule: homemade pizza or other tasty simplicities made with minimal fuss and even less washing up and half an episode of Taskmaster. The daughter knows as soon as we set things in motion and, when she goes trotting off to get her chair and impatiently waits for us to assemble on the couch, it’s clear it’s not Ramsey, Greg or Little Alex Horne she cares about. It’s not about the pizza or the luxury of getting to eat on the couch. It’s the togetherness she loves. It’s seeing and hearing her parents laugh out loud. Being a part of a ritual that caters to us more than it does to her. Being and feeling at home.
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If you were to ask the husband and I what makes our home feel like home – other than our human and furry babies – our answers would be the same. Our books. Our music. Our art. These are the three things within which we can always find pleasure, satisfaction, inspiration. A sense of calm and belonging. Our daughter has taught us that this is all that really matters, that it’s what she really needs from us – to share these values, this sense of home beyond the brick-and-mortar. And my hope is that, regardless of how many years go by, she will always feel like she can walk through our door, fall back into the couch and request a night of no way! after a tough week. That she can call on us for some Belle and Sebastian on the good days and the bad, anytime and anywhere. That there will always be a place for her to shut herself off from the rest of the world when needed, to escape into the words and the smile of Chimamanda, and the amarillo she wears so well.