The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy is home from college for the Christmas break.  Which means...

I have to remind him and his friends that they need to turn the stereo low and keep their voices down because I really do not want a visit from the cops at midnight.

"Like" and even occasionally "Duuuuuude!!!" have crept into my conversation.

I am forced to determine whether the noises from the garage are the cat screeching or simply something (I hesitate to call it music) coming from the stereo.  Thus far, it has been the latter. 

But most of all, it means discussing art.

The NSLDB interned with a couple of artists the summer before his freshman year, and has taken a number of college art courses, including courses on conceptual art.  On the surface, he is jaded, cynical.  He is especially contemptuous of the hype that seems to permeate the art world.

But scratch that surface, and there is passion.  Love, and knowledge, of the art itself.  Appropriate disdain for the pretension that reduces the art to nothing more than ego on the part of either the artist or the observer. An understanding of how art is, first and foremost, a means to communicate; absent that, it is insignificant or meaningless.

I do not know what form this love will take; it may be that he becomes an artist himself (although his first love has always been music), or at the very least he will go through his life appreciating the art he encounters.

But what I do know is that talking to him is a joy, and that something in me is very happy that I have raised a kid for whom art matters such a great deal.  I will be sad once he leaves for school again, and am reminded how soon it will be before he is gone, not quite for good, but for pretty much everything save holidays.  Although he is a Northern California boy through and through, I really do not expect him to return here once he is done in western Massachusetts.  I would be very surprised if he did not end up in New York or L.A.

It is usually said that children are gifts, blessings; it is lovely to have such reminders of how much he and his brothers mean in my life.