If I 'click here,' is it clicking in there?

Not having the energy for our normal philosophical discussions or even our not-so-serious games of Scrabble while Layla was pregnant, we developed a habit of watching DVDs at night before bed. The circumstances are different with Luke around, but not our energy level at night, so we’ve kept the habit. Tonight, a group of U.S. agents are working vigorously to stop a virus from disabling their computer network security. If they fail, terrorists will be able to access their computers and use the information to attack our country.

The heavily dramatic music, aggressive camera angles, flashing lights and blaring sirens try to portray the sense of severity, intensity and stress facing the agents. To me though, it’s just a lot of stressed out people typing really fast and yelling geek talk back and forth. What happened to just shut it off and then turn it on again? That usually fixes most of my computer problems. Where’s the big rolling boulder or flaming cauldron that Indiana Jones was stressed about? Or Darth Vader and the fleet of Tie Fighters that had Luke Skywalker sweating in his spacesuit?

I can feel the intensity of bone-crushing boulders, fiery pits and even futuristic lasers. But flashing cursors and spinning hourglasses only stress me out when I’m trying to catch the updated scores of a close Carolina basketball game. Maybe it’s intense because they're just typing and waiting. They cannot tell if their code is correct or if it's working until the computer tells them so. Maybe, but it’s still lame TV. It does however remind me of how I sometimes feel with Luke.

Teaching Luke that his fingernails hurt, the trash can is not for climbing and that waving good-bye does not have to be a two person task is a lot like typing random code into a computer in hopes that it will give the desired result. You cannot see if it’s working right away. You just hope that the right connections are being made.

Over and over, I try new tricks, new code. I can see his hourglass and flashing dots on the screen of his face telling me something is happening, but are my efforts working? Are they hurting? How long is it going to take? Indiana Jones could see the boulder roll by after he just managed to get out of the way. Luke Skywalker could see the Tie Fighters exploding behind him as he flew into the Death Star. I watch Luke learn all sorts of things outside of what I teach him, but so far, regardless of my pleading, he gives no indication that he will ever learn that poopy diaper changing time is not the time to twist, crawl and reach for the, er, that.

Despair? Not us. The nation’s safety doesn’t yet depend on Luke’s ability to keep his hands clean, wave or stay out of the trash. Heck, even those on whom the nation’s security does depend have a hard time with two of those three. Luke has come a long way in almost a year of life. He’s even learned a few things I’ve tried to teach him.

He knows the xylophone is for playing and the pots are for banging. He can turn pages, drink from a sippy cup and beat himself in the head with a spoon. He learned that last one all by himself, so I guess that’s progress.

The last couple days Luke has been devouring everything we put in front of him, even food. He loves foods it took me years to learn to appreciate. He can’t get enough Indian food, pallack paneer specifically, Inupiat foods like caribou stew and maktak (Bowhead whale blubber), and cottage cheese, which I still think deserves the name it gets on our receipts from the Stuaqpak—“dairy by-products.”


He knows “high-five” means slap the hand someone is sticking in his face, and “no” means shake your head back and forth. He pulls himself up and pushes his walker around the house. He’s even getting the idea that the rings can go back on the post.

His first tooth broke through a week or so ago. He discovered that if he pulls his hair, it hurts, and if he does it again, and again, it still hurts. He knows that no matter how many times I show him how the shapes fit through the same shaped holes, it’s way easier just to take off the top and dump them all out for Dad to put away later.

We’re still working on gravity. Not that gravity is any different on the North Slope, just that Luke hasn’t learned to respect it. To Luke, beds, chairs, couches and laps are for crawling off of head first. How do you teach an infant not to dive off of things on purpose? Yeah, there’s that way, but I’m looking for another way. That way still seems scary and is likely to be ineffective. The kid is willing to sacrifice his body to get what he wants.


All in all, Luke is doing great. He’s escaped from a few flaming cauldrons and rolling boulders in his first year for sure. We are constantly amazed at how quickly he’s growing into his own individual identity. He’s shown no lack of love or self-confidence, and no fear for that matter, so we’ll assume we’re on the right track in the long run.

In the short term, he seems to be learning quite well even if he rarely, or at least not immediately, lets on that it has anything to do with the effort we put in to teach him. Sometimes that frustrates me, but just when I think the “crazy-dad” dances I do to amuse him might be more truth than act, the hourglass disappears from his blank screen stare, and he sends a message that his computer is loading successfully. So we try not to stress, even if we can’t tell whether the agents on the DVD will fix the computer and save the nation or if the airplane game will ever get Luke to eat his strained green beans.