Enter Daigoro

(Note: If you're reading this blog for the first time, be sure to read the inaugural post, "The (Little) Middle Way" first)

What (or more accurately, who) is Daigoro?

Daigoro was the name of the fictional character Kozure Okami's son, who accompanied him in his epic adventures across Feudal Japan. I've chosen to use Daigoro as a pseudonym for my son - it's an obvious choice given my choice of nickname.

This Daigoro, my Daigoro, entered into this world in the early hours of the first week of April, 2005. My wife (who as yet lacks a pseudonym and will thus go nameless for the time being) had convinced me of the benefits of a home birth, and we had planned together for the event. Being a first time father, I was nervous, of course, but I was also well prepared by the patient and well-informed coaching of my wife, who has quite a bit of knowledge in childbirth from her medical-related education.

While she had been experiencing symptoms of early labour since that morning, she was convinced that she had some time yet to wait even as I arrived home from work around 6:30 that evening. We had taken a short course in so-called "self-hypnosis", a method of inducing a trance-like state which assisted in reducing both the perception of pain and making time seem to go by more quickly when feeling discomfort. It's actually a none-too-complex method, but it requires practice and preparation.

I suggested that she should being the early steps of going into a light state of self-hypnosis so that once labour began in earnest, she'd be prepared, but she declined, thinking she had plenty of time yet. She even went so far as to start doing laundry. By 9:30, though, she realized that perhaps this was proceeding a little faster than she expected and we paged the midwives. I believe they arrived sometime around 10:30, but my recollection of events is somewhat skewed.

Things proceeded quickly after that. The midwives were wonderful and my wife was brave (albeit understandably unreasonable at times) and my son was delivered without drugs (the term "natural childbirth" always seems a little snobbish to me) shortly before 3 AM. I am proud to say that I had enough of my wits about me to be in a position to "catch" the baby - as he emerged, he was cradled in my hands first.

Perhaps in some future post, I'll try to better capture the details of the birth, but it was first and foremost a whirlwind experience. I can barely remember details - helping my wife, comforting her, trying to play host to our midwives - it all seemed to happen so fast. One thing I will always remember, however, is the moment of pure joy as I held my son for the first time and wrapped him in blankets to give to his mother.

As it happened, we had been expecting a girl. During a routine ultrasound, my wife overheard the technician describing "girl parts" in medical lingo that my wife could understand. So, as the baby emerged and I saw that it was a boy, I was both happy for the health of a new child, but also surprised that it would be a son and not a daughter.

I suppose it is somewhat of a throwback in today's society to want a son as your first born, but I would be dishonest to say I wasn't hoping for one. Patrilinear primogeniture is a sexist concept, but it dies hard in the male mind.

Despite it being a relatively fast labour, it understandably left my wife quite drained. We bustled about for a little while, made a few phone calls and after thanking the midwives, we tumbled into bed. Thus ended Daigoro's first night on earth.

Since I'm starting this blog belatedly about 21.5 months into Daigoro's development, I'll have to bounce back and forth between current accounts of him and what happened in the past. I hope you will forgive me any temporal confusion this may create.

Daigoro today is a healthy and vigorous young toddler, with a wry, scrunched up smile and a ready laugh. His eyes, sometimes describes as "snapping black" are indeed so dark brown as to be nearly black. He has a mop of wavy light brown hair when it hasn't been cut short (as his mother prefers) and is pretty average-sized for a child his age. He is long-bodied and short limbed, like both his parents, and though not quite stocky, he is certainly solidly built. His current speed settings seem to be "running" and "running faster" but if he interested in something, he will sit down to contemplate it quite thoroughly.

While generally quite happy and pleasant, he also has a meditative and contemplative nature at times, looking very serious when he beetles his lightly toned eyebrows and simply gazes about curiously.

His passions are currently trucks, cars and trains, a trait which I imagine he shares with 80% or more of North American boys. His first word was "shoe", learned because he so enjoys going outside; putting on his shoes meant going there. His current vocabulary is thus (rendered here in no particular order other than the ones that spring first to mind, and by no means comprehensive):

shoe, car, mommy, mom, momma, dada, daddy, kitty, bib, cookie, no, down, up (sometimes up and down get reversed), outside, door, open, hockey, stick, broken, doggie, gi-chan (Japanese familiar term for "grandfather"), truck, plane, train, come, please, thank-you, welcome, juice, water, key, pooh, bama (banana), cracker, cookie, yes (also "yup" and "yeah"), ow, bath, wet, ball, go, one-two-three (said mostly by rote when "counting" something, not always actually related to the number being counted and often restarted), pizza (well, "pida", but close enough), bread, toast, jam, cereal, apple (applies to all round, reddish or red-orange fruits), orange, sock, fish(y), cow, horse, pig, chicken, bird, play, dance, snow, cold, hot, baby, treat(s), tree, wheee, okay, tee (TV), pooh (as in the bear, not the body function), light, diaper, corn, book, jacket, pants, shirt, mitten(s), bike + various names of family members and fellow homecare children.

There are a number of other words he seems to understand without necessarily being able to repeat them to us - our instruction to be "gentle" for example. Taking a moment to write down these words, it's interesting to note what he's learned and what he hasn't learned by this point.

In some cases ("thank you", "please"), I'm quite happy he's learned the words. In others ("pooh", "tee"), I'm not quite as proud.

No one said this path would be easy.

The (Little) Middle Way

"...These two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

"Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (The Discourses of Buddha)

Ah, the inaugural post. Without presuming to sound too pompous or self-aware, it's probably best to jump right into things and avoid the usual blather about why one is starting a blog and what one went through to do it, or what one hopes to accomplish with it. In some sense, this is inevitably belly-gazing, but perhaps it can transcend that state and become something more.

What point is there is starting a blog with a quote from Buddha? I'm not a Buddhist - I'm not even well-versed in Buddhism, aside from various concepts picked up here and there from University courses in eastern religion and reading about bushido. The quote above reflects a few things about the name of this blog "Between Heaven and Hell" and its Japanese-inspired internet address: kozure-tengoku-to-jigoku.blogspot.com

Tengoku is the Japanese word for "heaven". Jingoku is the Japanese word for Hell. As far as I can make out, my chosen internet alias of Kozure translates roughly as "with child" or "accompanying a child". It's a fragment of the name "Kozure Okami", itself a pseudonym of Itto Ogami, a character in a Japanese graphic novel series (more on that later). Kozure Okami is known more commonly in the west as "Lone Wolf and Cub" and is one of my favourite works of graphic literature.

As it happens, Tengoku to Jigoku is also the title of a Kurosawa film whose title is usually translated as "High and Low" in English, though I had no awareness of the film until I started trying to think of names relating to Heaven and Hell.

This blog is about the trials and rewards of bringing up children. In my case, specifically a young boy of (currently) 21 months, who will go by the alias "Daigoro", and another child who is due to be born (God-willing) in early April. When thinking about this concept, I considered how many people throughout the history of the world have encountered this utterly mundane and unremarkable, yet sometimes also transcendent and unique experience. How many billions have had exactly this experience? What right do I have to write about it?

Well, the simple answer is that I have as much right as any other. The trick is lending a unique, or if not unique, at least interesting perspective. This blog will be about the highs and lows of parenthood - the Heaven and Hell aforementioned, while acknowledging the commonality of the experience - what is between Heaven and Hell? Everything that we can experience and value as human beings.

The title also reflects a little bit of exaggeration on my part. Certainly I haven't experienced anything so trying as to term it "hellish" thus far in 21 months of raising my son. Fortunately, I have been lucky enough to have moments of pure delight - as close to heaven as one can reasonably expect. So, the name of the blog reflects a bit of my sense of humour about the whole affair - translating something ordinary and low-key into something exceptional and epic.

Mostly this blog comes about as a result of me noticing how quickly tiny landmarks of child development pass - winking in and out in the space of a few days - and aside from pure memory and the occasional photograph, no record of these precious moments exists.

This blog, written somewhere between Heaven and Hell, records these sometimes challenging, frequently wonderful, but always fleeting moments. I thank you for joining me on this journey.