The Nutcracker Monologues

Daniel had a nice, extra-long nap this evening in the car. This is good news, because it meant that by the time the proverbial Sandman came sauntering along, Daniel had the strength to resist him vigorously, and remain among the waking long after everyone else, including me, had more-or-less gone to sleep. I say "more-or-less," because in my case, I was lying next to him, drifting in and out of that hated land of exile like some relentless diplomatic without portfolio - or state - as Daniel expounded on every conceivable angle of a topic that has always captivated me: that unsavory-looking soldier-nutcracker from Tchaikovsky's ballet of the more-or-less same name.

The inspiration behind Daniel's almost chemically-enhanced-seeming preoccupation with the Nutcracker was the fact that he had been reading - or intensely image-scanning - a short children's book that covers that topic. It is a short, richly illustrated synopsis of the story-line behind the world's most famous ballet, except that unlike some mundane summary that you might find in your playbill at The Boston Ballet, this is in verse, and every two lines of verse rhyme, with a dogged determination to make the meter come as close to fitting a poetic pattern as you can expect from a 20-page children's book. In other words, the book is a masterpiece. But what I hadn't realized was that "The Nutcracker" is actually Daniel's favorite story. I am somewhat impressed and encouraged by this fact, considering that the Nutcracker is, after all, a timeless, heartwarming tale of Epic Proportions, adapted to that highest of art-forms known as Ballet, set to music by the world-renowned Peter Ilyich. [We like Peter Ilyich, out of principle, although we repudiate Vladimir Ilyich, even though many, many people tell me I resemble him, with my luminous hairline and minimalist goatee; the super-stars among these "Observateurs Extraordinaires" add that one difference is that Vlad was not-quite-so-well-rounded, so to speak, but I digress.]

But yes, if you have our cultural baggage, you have to like Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker out of principle, even if that composition seems about as over-played as "Blinded by the Light," or "The Love Shack"... Even if, like me, you always found the story more-than pathetic: Russian kids on Christmas Eve get a visit from a creepy "Onkel", with an inexplicably hyper-Prussian surname, who looks like an aging Marxist nuclear physicist, Sis gets a sinister nutcracker dressed like a British regular circa 1776 with wide eyes and a gaping mouth; Bro steals the Christmas present and promptly breaks it; Sis goes to pieces, and then to sleep, and spends the night dreaming of some science-fiction-for-ten-year-old-girl fantasies involving flying over sugarplumb fairies and some Festival of Nations dance routines, only to end in the brutal battlefield slaying of a Mouse King, and some deus-ex-machina implausibly-happy ending. Yes, it's an execrable story.

But it gets better: I can't help but suspect that the bloody, rodent-killing climax, undertaken by the staggeringly superior-armed humanoid "peacekeepers" is something that Daniel particularly likes about this tale.

But back to our own middle-of-the night journey.

Usually, after I put the boys to bed, Ian begins the Lobbying for a story. They like stories that I make up, after lights-out, which is ironic, because I'm uniquely awful at coming up with stories of my own (although, again, the Nutcraker story is hardly any more compelling than my adventure of traffic-scofflaw trucks on a New England interstate highway)... Usually, Ian begs for a story, and in his own low-pressure way, points out that he always goes right to sleep after I tell him a story, and in fact, the story is what gets him to sleep... But tonight, Team Daniel, Army of One, bulldozed over the story campaign in favor of his own colorful tale-telling, which put both Ian and me to sleep. The difference between Ian' sleep and mine, however, was that I kept drifting in and out of sleep as Daniel would season his soliloquy with "Daddy" and certain questions on the subject matter. Many not-so-Geneva-observing armies tend to keep their prisoners of war awake in extended and methodical ways, but thankfully our discourse was shorter, and the questioner was motivated entirely by curiosity about nutcrackers, and how to obtain one. Sleep deprivation is not necessarily pleasant, but our bout of it was short by 21st-century standards.

In any case, the inquiry began even before lights-out. Daniel asked me if it's possible to acquire a nutcracker, as seen in the same-named ballet, which would be just a doll, and not an actual nutcracker, in the functional sense. I told Daniel that I thought that, by now, there were probably plenty of Nutcracker dolls which didn't actually crack real nuts, since the story and ballet were so popular. At this point, softly, spontaneously, and largely to himself, Daniel let out his initial reaction: "Good." Daniel pointed out to me that a nutcracker would go well with his Flynn Rider doll. [Flynn Rider is the bad-boy hero of Disney's Freudian Rapunzel remake, "Tangled.]

Everything that followed thereafter flowed more-or-less as outlined below:

Do you think you could ask Santa Claus to get me a nutcracker that doesn't crack nuts?

[Ian volunteered: "I've never seen a soldier-nutcracker that actually worked. I have no idea how it would crack a nut."]

Daniel continued, not-quite-verbatim:

Are nutcrackers made of wood? I want one made of plastic. I like plastic dolls. Flynn Rider is my only doll. I would like a nutcracker, but one that doesn't crack nut, made of plastic.

Do you think I'll ever see a mouse that's dead - with its eye open or closed - that still has its head? [I then asked him if he had ever seen a mouse with no head, and pursued some details from the story.] You know Leonid - is Leonid a boy or a girl? ["Leonid is a boy - he's my friend.] Oh - who's the girl with the golden hair? ["That's Leonid's wife, Sana."] Yeah, we were with Sana, and she showed us a mouse that was dead, and didn't have any head, and she told us he must have been a soldier-mouse. ["Where did you see the mouse?"] At our house, outside. [Ian contested the headless detail...] Have you ever seen a mouse that was alive? [Yes, at the pet store; I didn't mention all the other places I've seen live mice over the years...] Do mice have disease - do all animal that aren't dogs have diseases ? [Something along those lines...] Do you think I could get a mouse, and maybe have it fight with the nutcracker? [I couldn't resist: "Would this mouse still be alive at the end of it?"] Maybe.

I like dolls cause you can do thing to them like turn their heads around.

Do you think you could ask Santa to get me a nutcracker? [Ian mentioned "Saint Nick."] His name is "Saint Nick," or "Santa Claus" or "Saint John". Or maybe I could get one for my birthday. Should I get one for my birthday or for Christmas? Do you think you could ask Santa to get me a plastic nutcracker that doesn't crack nuts, Daddy?

There were several additional "loops" through the line of inquiry around plasticness, not cracking nuts, could I ask Santa on Daniel's behalf, etc.

Somehow, we both eventually - very eventually - went to sleep. But I didn't dream of a nutcracker taking me by the hand and flying with me over Saint Petersburg and off to the far corners of Asia to observe politically incorrect choreographic caricature. But when I woke up, at 3:00 or so, the recent memory of our Nutcracker Discourse was so fresh and unusual, I felt it had to be blogged before I could go back to sleep. It's much, much funnier than anything Tchaikovsky could ever think up.

(September 12, 2011)