{"id":1280,"date":"2013-04-09T14:20:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T19:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2013-04-09T15:04:41","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T20:04:41","slug":"obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=1280","title":{"rendered":"Obsession"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AndreasTruck\"My 15-month old Andreas is a child of many obsessions.\u00a0 He\u2019s obsessed with oranges.\u00a0 More commonly known as azas.<\/i>\u00a0 We keep clementines around (calling them \u201coranges\u201d for ease of use with him) and\u00a0 he takes every opportunity throughout the day to go to the kitchen demanding an \u201caza! aza!\u201d\u00a0 If he can have one in each hand, all the better.\u00a0 After holding an \u201caza\u201d for a while, he\u2019ll bite into it, the juice all oozing down his arm.\u00a0 He grimaces at the bitter taste of the peel, but can also taste the good stuff inside.\u00a0 That\u2019s usually when I intervene and peel the orange and give him a wedge or two, then try to hide it and distract him with something else.\u00a0 (Good luck to me with that!)<\/p>\n

He\u2019s obsessed with trucks, cars – anything on wheels – although firetrucks are especially exciting.\u00a0 Who needs television when the busy street in front of the house is entertainment enough?\u00a0 Tut!\u00a0 Tah!\u00a0 Wheel\u00a0 Fast!\u00a0 Van!\u00a0<\/i> And if a REALLY big and impressive vehicle drives by, he growls the word and says it extra loud.\u00a0 \u201cBUUUSSSSS!\u201d<\/p>\n

He is obsessed with his older brother Abe.\u00a0 \u201cAba! Aba!\u201d he says, whenever he hears the door open or someone come down the stairs. He asks for him dozens of times a day, and when we pass the door to his room we have to go and look and see if he is there. And when Abe finally gets home from school and sits down to build with blocks with him for a few minutes, you have never seen such glee come from such a little guy.<\/p>\n

One of his other obsessions is the pet<\/i>.\u00a0 That does not mean our tortoise, Dasher, but rather the trumpet.\u00a0 I assure you that we\u2019ve done nothing to encourage this. \u201cPet!\u201d\u00a0 he says when Dave picks up a trumpet.\u00a0 He\u2019ll say \u201chorn\u201d when I get out my horn, but it\u2019s more like \u201coh, you\u2019re getting that thing out again….\u201d\u00a0 Although he does like my stopping mute because, to him, it looks likes a little trumpet.\u00a0 When Dave plays, the real joy comes, and when Dave takes a little break we hear \u201cPet! More!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TrumpetsWe have a trumpet calendar<\/a> that showcases a famous trumpet on each page.\u00a0 We currently have hidden it because, if we don\u2019t, we would be reading it like a book all day long. \u00a0 \u201cThis is the Vincent Bach trumpet in C that Adolph \u201cBud\u201d Herseth played.\u201d\u00a0 [turn page] \u201cThis is the Kruspe Bass Trumpet in F played by Ernest Andauer of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.\u201d\u00a0 [turn page] \u201cHere is a Schilke B-flat trumpet played by Bill Chase, one of the most famous lead players of all time….\u201d Each page gets exuberant kicks of joy out of him and more shouts of \u201cpet!\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this got me thinking about my own early obsessions, some of them sentimental and a little weird. For instance, after reading Anne Frank\u2019s Diary in elementary school, I started keeping one myself just in case I died a tragic death.\u00a0 And then there was a prominent presence of the color purple in my wardrobe in the 7th grade.<\/p>\n

Other fixations were less quirky:\u00a0 Laura Ingalls Wilder (I owned a prairie bonnet – and wore it), Mary Lou Retton (I was one of the countless girls who started gymnastics because of her influence), and Anne of Green Gables. These were a few of my childhood heroines, and, perhaps, obsessions.<\/p>\n

The writer George Saunders recently visited the St. James School, a school in North Philadelphia (one of the most challenged areas of the city) attended by a small group of 5th and 6th graders from the neighborhood.\u00a0 I was unable to attend his talk, but read about it later.\u00a0 One girl asked him his opinion about why you have to go to school.\u00a0 His answer was, \u201cBecause there are people inside you who want to come out.\u201d\u00a0 He went on to explain the importance of teachers and how they can help to shape the future of the students.\u00a0 He also talked with the audience about the question of why one reads books at all.\u00a0 In part, it\u2019s to go back in time, he said, and to seek an alternate experience that makes us larger human beings.\u00a0 It\u2019s to help us find our place in the world.<\/p>\n

Is there are truer way to describe what books do for us?\u00a0 And what school can do for us?\u00a0 His description fits one of the things that music does best for us, too. But that is another blog post….<\/p>\n

Saunder\u2019s comments also reminded me that the expansion of experience was precisely the role that my early attachments played (perhaps excluding the color purple). Passion, resilience, and determination are just a few of the lessons that Laura, Mary Lou and Anne taught me.\u00a0 Though many heroes have been added to the ranks since I was in elementary school, these women were key in helping me start to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, and what kind of possibilities life might hold for me.<\/p>\n

I know Andreas\u2019 obsessions will no doubt change very quickly, but I wouldn\u2019t have a problem with him always loving his older sibs, music, and citrus fruit. Methods of transportation are fine too, especially since we\u2019ll be on the go this summer.\u00a0 A fascination with planes could be a very good thing.\u00a0 It\u2019s not such a bad start to a life\u2019s line-up of heroes that will fuel his imagination.<\/p>\n

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Ruminations on the obsessions of Andreas and the role obsessions play in our lives. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1295,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}