“A hundred percent!” So says Sam, my eldest son, to signal his acceptance of the things I say. To which I ask if there are confidence limits to his degree of agreement with me given his mind, which is very numbers-based. He’s a computer coder with an AI company in north London and in his work speaks a completely different language from me, quite apart from the variation in the phrases he uses that signal the near 30 years of age difference between us.
Jack, his younger brother, uses somewhat similar terms in his work to the ones I employ in veterinary ophthalmology. He’s just finished a master’s in rock climbing and surfing down in Swansea. “Rock climbing and surfing,” I hear you say, “I didn’t know you could do a master’s in that!” Well, you can’t – he has a master’s in zoology, but he seems to have spent most of the last two years doing those first two things! He was, truth be told (a phrase I’ve picked up from Sam, I must confess!), investigating the pupil shapes of different species of angelfish and how that affects their vision. The fruit hasn’t fallen very far from the tree there, as one of my friends remarked!
“Rock climbing and surfing,” I hear you say, “I didn’t know you could do a master’s in that!” Well, you can’t – he has a master’s in zoology, but he seems to have spent most of the last two years doing those first two things
This leaves Ross, my youngest son. Ten years or so ago, the new head of music at his school, a half-decent (but only half!) comprehensive, restarted the school orchestra, which had fallen into disuse during the tenure of the less-than-half-decent previous head of music. “Bring along any instrument you have,” encouraged the new teacher. So Ross took along the flute his mum used to play. “Sorry,” said the head of music, “we’ve got too many flautists. Could you play the oboe parts on your flute please?” After a week or so, Ross asked if they had an oboe in the school. There’s one in an old box here, he was told, have a go on that. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Ross was completely entranced by the instrument, so much so that, after a while, he asked me if we could find him the other double reed instrument – the bassoon. We picked one up on eBay (not for very much), and we eventually found him a bassoon teacher, too – a music student at the university. She was enraptured by Ross’s playing and told him he should apply for the Junior Academy. Junior Academy? I’d never heard of it! But every music school has a junior section on Saturdays. Ross went along for an audition, taking his oboe and bassoon. “We’ve good news and bad news,” they said. “We definitely want you to come along every Saturday. The bad news? We never want you to play the bassoon ever again; it will ruin your oboe playing!” So every Saturday I took Ross to the station for the 7am train, which would arrive in London in time for him to get to the Royal Academy for a day’s worth of music.
If I enquired how school was or what he was doing in biology or maths, the answer was short – monosyllabic, you might say. But if I asked him about Albinoni’s oboe concertos he would talk me through all 12!
On the car journey there we talked. Well, he talked in response to my questioning. If I enquired how school was or what he was doing in biology or maths, the answer was short – monosyllabic, you might say. But if I asked him about Albinoni’s oboe concertos he would talk me through all 12! If I asked him how the oboe d’amour differed from the standard oboe he would tell me of its pear-shaped bell, its longer bocal (the metal piece attaching the reed to the instrument) and its more serene tone in A compared to the oboe in C. “You’ll probably know it best from Ravel’s Boléro,” he told me. Basically, as I drove, he gave me a half-hour lecture on whatever subject I wanted – as long as it was something to do with the oboe! Now, 10 years on, he is at the end of his master’s in performance and about to play the bass oboe (don’t ask!) in Holst’s The Planets in this summer’s proms.
How is it that the same genetic material (give or take some chromosomal cross-over during the miosis that produced the gametes that created the three of them) and the same environment (apart from their different positioning in the sibling rivalries that occur in every family) gave rise to three such different individuals? Sam is ultra maths orientated, apart from when he’s acting – a hobby that looked to be his life’s ambition after university until he diverted to computer science. Jack is the really physical one of the three, most at home by the sea or in it. Ross is immersed in his music and nothing much else.
When they asked me 20 years ago what I wanted them to be when they grew up, I said that was easy – be happy!
When they asked me 20 years ago what I wanted them to be when they grew up, I said that was easy – be happy! When they asked what I wanted them to do I said it didn’t matter, as long as they were happy and they made other people happy. And that, I’m happy to say, is what they are, with, to be honest, very little input from me!
