When I am bigger for babies...dance Rufus dance...

We were watching "Marley and Me" and Jennifer Aniston's character announced that she was pregnant.
Izzy: What's pregnant?"
Daddy: "It means when a Mommy is going to have a baby."
Izzy: When will I be bigger for a baby? When I'm five?"
Daddy: "No, not when you're five."
Izzy: "When?"
Daddy: "Hopefully when I am long gone, I'm not ready to be a grandpa."
Izzy: "Where are you going when you are a grandpa?"
Daddy: "Isn't that Mommy I hear, making a cupcake for you?"
Izzy: "A cupcake for me?"


I am a writer. I have been a writer for as long as I can remember, really. I wrote stories and entered writing contests while I was still in public school...Terry Goldsworthy and I won a chapter book each and mention in the school newspaper.
My other passion is music, which didn't come to me as early but the desire to create and perform it are no less intense than writing. The two of them are as natural to me as breathing...they feel right. Now my latest love/obsession, is bagpipes. I toyed with them a little when I was younger but ultimately gave them up for the devil rock and roll. When the halcyon days of vans and buses and hotel suites(oh my!) were behind me, I came back to octopus wrestling and all of the glory therein. It has been in my family, in one form or another and it felt right to come back to it after all was said and done. And I had hoped that somewhere in there, my children would embrace their heritage as I had and pick up a set of pipes and march right in line with me...
Before Izzy was born, we decided that we didn't want to know the sex of the baby, that we would keep it a complete surprise. But call her "the Baby" got old and "It" was too nasty sounding. Somewhere along the way we took to calling the unborn progeny "Rufus". In order to hurry along my musical inheritance and assure that bagpipes would be the first sound the child would hear, I used to play my practice chanter at Mrs. Narrator's belly. Much to my delight, Rufus would dance up a storm. Mrs Narrator wasn't so keen on it, it generally made her have to pee. When she was still very young, Izzy was very colicky. We either had to go into the bathroom with the door closed and rock her back and forth to the soothing sound of the blow dryer or I would carry her while marching back and forth across the kitchen floor to the strains of "Flowers of the Forrest." A lovely tune but one usually set aside for funerals...The kid loved bagpipes as much as I did from a very early age and I was over the moon about it. Visions of my daughter and I, marching side by side winning the worlds...ahh it makes a father proud.
So about two weeks ago, the band I play with had come over for a practice before a competition and Izzy saw one of the younger tenor drummers. (These are the drummers that spin the sticks as they are playing.) I swear I actually saw little hearts above Izzy's head. She was completely taken with this little girl who was whipping the sticks around to beat all hell. The girl's mother, who is also in the band, gave Izzy a spare set of sticks and my pipe dreams became just that...my little girl wants to be a tenor drummer.
I have to say that during the course of the practice I would catch her out of the corner of my eye, Izzy doesn't like to be looked directly at while she is performing, she was beating time and keeping the beat better than a few drummers I have know. And she is four...
I guess if there is a point to all this, it is that fate will put you where you are meant to be, where you fit best and no amount of pushing, seriously or not, by your parents will make a lick of difference. I may not get to march beside her but if she sticks with it and I really hope she does I will be proud to have her march behind me, bringing up the beat. Glasgow Green won't know what hit it...