Letter D Tchotchke Challenge: Drums

There may be more drums around this house but these were the ones close at hand. When Anne, of God Bless Y'All Read Good, suggested this Tchotchke Challenge she envisioned that we might post our pictures and add a little information on why we had so many of the Tchotchkes in question. I'm not too keen, yet, on long explanations (although this post is going that way I'm afraid...) but one reason drums have significance in this house is that my first-born child --- a "masculine child" (as Luco Brazi would say), and a musician, geographer, student, midnight-shift UPS employee, and occasional caregiver to the Alzheimer's lady next door; in other words an all-around great kid (just like his sister about whom I'll kavel in another post), was never baptized because his parents are basically heathens. BUT this masculine child was, at the age of 13, given a quite elaborate ceremony of introduction into the adult world by his Takoma Park Dance and Drum group, led by a very spiritual guy named, what else?, Stream. In those days, The Child and His Dad attended these weekly Dance and Drum meetings which were open to all and featured a couple of hours of drum banging, chanting, free-form dancing, and general good feelings in a church basement. When The Child turned 13, the group decided that he needed a kind of alternative bar mitzvah/baptism. It was great. To my eyes and ears (I attended the ceremony but was not a regular member of the group) it seemed like a Native American-style ritual; lots of references to Earth, Moon, Stars, Nature. The Child was painted up Indian-style, blindfolded, and guided through a maze of adults who were also drumming and chanting. Stream read passages from I-don't-know-what-but-wish-I'd-asked, and in the final act of the ceremony the women lined up to create a corridor for The Child to pass through. We each helped push him through the corridor and when he reached the end the blindfold was removed and he was now officially part of the adult community. I always thought of that female-corridor as the birth canal. We pushed this blind child into the light, just like the mothers among us pushed our blind infants down our birth canals ...am I getting too graphic? Forgive me. I get like that when thinking about the miracle of my kids.