Crank

Benny seems to be developing a troubled side. Setting him on his back for a diaper change is like setting him in boiling oil: the horrified shrieks and violent thrashing last for hours. When you offer him food in which he has no interest, he will hurl it contemptuously to the ground with one backhand sweep and stare with bored, irritated intensity at a spot on the far wall. He has also started to produce low, throaty growls, often for no reason. Though for the most part these growls are subdued affairs, somewhat unnerving but easy to write off as Tuvan warm up exercise, occasionally they snowball into spasms of white rage, eye popping, vein snapping contractions of anger whose raw emotional force lifts nape hairs throughout the room.

The fact that our child is developing a temper is perhaps not totally unexpected: he is, after all, the ill-begotten offspring of a fiery Latina and her grumbelpocks Toews of a husband. But expectations aside, he has been such a sweet child thus far that this shift to the cranky makes me wonder if something is happening to the boy. Could those three new teeth be torturing his gums? Has licking all the lead-infused construction dust littering the dome floor gone to his brain? Sunburn? Dehydration? Brown house spiders....?

We tend to think that watching a child pass through developmental milestones is a moving and uplifting process. What I have come to realize that it can also be somewhat demoralizing. The Zoogle that came out of the box was a wonderful creature, healthy, happy, perfect. At the One Month mark, the object of parenting seemed to consist of nothing more than holding steady at the helm: acting in such a way that this natural wonderfulness would just continue, in degree if not in form. What this naive vision overlooks, however, is that sweetness is no more intrinsic to our animal nature than frightful rage and violent displays of temper. Sweetness may be useful for convincing your mother not to throw you out with the compost, but rage is good back-up system, a terrifying efficient way of ensuring that she doesn't take you for granted and continues to feed you on schedule.

Benjamin is still a sweet child. His smile illuminates the room, and when he laughs that high, ridiculous giggle, there is not a heart in the world that can resist him. But slowly, a more complex creature is oozing into being. He is 'own little man', as my uncle recently said, willful, independent, conscious of what he likes and doesn't like and ruthless in letting you know it. And while this particular Crank may be short lived (he won't be in diapers forever), I strongly suspect that what we are seeing reflects some permanent stamp of character, a temperament that is at once fiery and stubborn and will last long into his adult life. Which is a sobering thought: if nape hair rises at the antics of a 25 pound cherub gone berserk, imagine the effect when he's a hairy chested six foot six 250 pound raging guerrilla of an adult. Which he will be in about two years, at the rate he's going.