Skip to main content

Better, Beta (Perfect skin)

Click to play (Click for lyrics)

A good blog piece is like a good piece of pop music: essentially trivial, it still contains just enough wit and glimpses of interest to keep the reader coming back. The main difference is that you cannot always rely on a catchy tune to save the day (unless you click to play!): a few cute pictures must needs go, that the devil drives. With this thought, but accompanied by the excellent Mr Lloyd Cole (1984, 2011), I announce a return to Devenish...

I have really no idea what has kept readers coming back to a blog that has lain dormant for three months or more: in the last month this blog has received nearly 300 hits: in its heyday, it never exceeded 700. Go figure, whether this is good or bad news, whether I should bother. At all. events, I really appreciate those returning visitors, wherever and whyever you are... this is for you.

'Shame on you, you've got no sense of grace, shame on me
ah just in case I might come to a conclusion
other than that which is absolutely necessary
and that's perfect skin...'

Justin also is blessed with perfect skin, and though I'm reasonably certain that this is all he has in common with Louise, the protagonist in Lloyd Cole's 1983 song —'Louise is the girl/with the perfect skin/She says 'Turn on the light/otherwise it can't be seen.'/She's got cheekbones like geometry/ and eyes like sin... [that line worthy of Leonard Cohen]—nevertheless he is, on the cusp of turning three years old, perfect in so many other ways, too. Three years ago, even two, I could not have imagined that he would bring so much happiness into our lives, into the lives of everyone who knows him. Quite the opposite. In the days immediately following his diagnosis as a child with Down Syndrome, I felt cursed and condemned, knowing that it was my duty to take care of him, wondering what I had done to deserve such a punishment. Parent and martyr, me! I write this, as with previous posts about Justin, in the hope that my experience will help and encourage other new parents in this apparently unenviable situation. For the fact is that my life has been enhanced immeasurably by Justin's being here, by his take on reality (as well as I can interpret it), by his innocence and—for those are perhaps attributes of every young child—by his otherness. Had he been born with the usual number of chromosome pairs, I might never have realized, despite twenty-odd years of teaching and research ('Barring pathology...'), that language input and general intelligence really doesn't produce grammatical competence: Justin's total productive language consists of about 20 'words', most of which are manual iconic gestures; he has only a very few arbitrary signs—none of them referential—and one or two two-sign combinations. On the other hand, I couldn't have known just how much can be communicated without language. (Or, maybe I would have, anyway: by coming gradually to the conclusion that the Japanese language is just a teasing form of ornamentation that Japanese people use to disguise their telepathic abilities: certainly, it serves no obvious communicative function. But I digress).
Nor would I have appreciated how difficult walking really is. I should have, of course: after a lifetime of (reading about) robotics research, even the fictional Daleks have only just managed to get upstairs. Seeing how long it is taking Justin to learn to walk confidently and fluidly, it is really awe-inspiring that typical children master this skill in a matter of weeks. (We had to make two 4-hour round trip visits a fortnight ago to a hospital in the back of beyond in Fukuchiyama, to have special insoles made to improve Justin's gait and posture. We have these now: the only problem is that he hardly wears shoes, since no-one wears anything inside and he rarely walks outside. Catch-22. But over time, it must help!)



Now, where was I? Yes, the better beta. I'll get there in the next post. Promise.



Click to play (2011) (We are not getting any younger. It's still a great song, but something is lost.)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turbulence (Thanks for all the fish, and more)

[Note: this piece is not about about my family, nor does it involve literary or musical criticism. I’m not anticipating any attractive illustrations or other lures, and no musical accompaniment either. So if that’s what you came for, look away now. There will be more such articles in the future, I hope, but this is not one of them. You have been been warned.] Tokushima Naruto Whirlpool (Shikoku Excursion) Events of the last few days have left me, both literally and figuratively, in a painfully disordered state of mind. In plain English, I’m stressed, and my head aches. Actually, it twinges, rather than aches, but the precise description matters little; at all events, the pain ‘comes and goes’, as they say. (Where pain goes to, when it goes, is a puzzle in itself. I have this anthropomorphised image of Pain, like some peripatetic poison dwarf, doing the rounds of the neighbourhood: “Hi, Nigel didn’t want me this hour, so I’ve decided to drop in on you for a while. Don’t worry thoug...
Post a Comment
Read more

Remembering Dad (Thinking about Madeleine II)

Over the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about my father, Gordon Duffield, who died earlier this year, far too soon, before we had a chance to talk. You might think that in nearly fifty years, we would have had a proper conversation, but though I told him about myself (too much at times, at times too little), and though he always listened, he only rarely shared his innermost thoughts, his personal beliefs as a man apart from his parental role, as a father and breadwinner; even then, when he revealed anything of himself, it was only in writing, never in conversation. My father was the kindest man I have ever known, the most forgiving of others, the hardest on himself: in all my life, I only once saw him lose his temper, and it was not with me. (If I can get through a single day without berating one of my children, it is a rare achievement.) He was a good man, without a trace of self-consciousness, generous and tolerant to a fault, and—until his last weeks—optimistic b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cambridge Blues ('Foundationed deep')

"I" Staircase, Trinity Hall, Cambridge  This weekend past, I returned to Cambridge with Ayumi, Julian and Justin for the first time in seven years. The occasion was a college reunion dinner, marking approximately 40 years of life since matriculation (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 entrance years): about half of us (~50) from each annual cohort turned up to compare notes, reminisce, squeeze our sagging frames into formal evening wear, and report biographical highlights. It is worth noting that this was a self-selecting group: those with sufficient time, opportunity, income (it wasn't a cheap weekend break), self-regard and retained affection for their alma mater to trundle up; as bushy tailed and 'Hail fellow, well met', as age and misanthropy might allow.  Sic transit gloria iuvenum. I didn't have a great time, nor yet was it a disastrous waste. This is hardly surprising, since the curse of middle age is profound ambivalence about almost every extra-familial event or ...
Post a Comment
Read more