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• Fixating on a five and a half-minute-long U2 song with a rather complex musical arrangement. Being able to sing the chorus of the song without prompting. Sitting at rapt attention during the song, moving only to sing and drum along. Listening to the song over and over and over for nearly 40 minutes, shrieking, "Sing "oh you look so beautiful tonight'!" until we hit the repeat button.
• Telling me, during the intro to Ben Folds' version of "Video Killed the Radio Star": "I like this piano, Mama," followed by "I like this guitar" and "I like these drums" as the other instruments join in.
• Telling me that anything with a strong, simple beat is the White Stripes.
• Turning everything into an instrument. Everything. A pair of chopsticks isn't just a good substitute for drumsticks, but also makes a fine horn and cello. When she saws one stick across the other she tells us she's making music.
• On the rare occasion that I don't have music playing, she points to my computer and says, "I want to hear music." She got a bit miffed one day last week when I had the audacity to listen to NPR in the truck, and demanded I cut that shit out, pronto.
• Chattering about the "beautiful singing" when American Idol is on and watching the performers with slack-jawed enrapturement.
• With kids music, she can hear a song once or twice and she'll have the lyrics and melody memorized.
• She'll sit at the table and pound the palms of her hands on the surface, annoucing that she's drumming. Then she'll switch to tapping it with her fingertips, telling us that she's playing piano.

The list goes on and on. The fact is, this kid loves music. Just about everything she wants to do involves music in one way or another, either listening to it or finding ways to make her own.

I wasn't 100% sure that this wasn't just normal toddler behavior. I asked Miss K. if she's noticed Clara Jane having a particular aptitude for music. "She loves playing with the toy pianos and singing songs," she said. "She's just very, very smart. I don't have to tell you how advanced she is in everything."

"Actually, you do have to tell me. I know she's smart, but I don't know what constitues 'advanced'," I said.

I have a real problem with comparing kids to each other. With having two parents with perfectionism issues, I want to do whatever I can to keep Clara Jane from going through that. Saying a kid is "advanced" seems dangerously close to putting her on a continuum. Even if she's towards the top of that continuum, I don't want her to have to deal with that.

I went on to tell Miss K. the items on the above list, watching as her jaw dropped lower and lower with each item. "That's amazing," she kept saying, over and over. "That's so far beyond where most kids her age are. Get her in music lessons. Now. What she's doing is exceptional."

There's that word. Exceptional.

I know I shouldn't be surprised. I've got the test scores around here that prove I was a gifted child, which is another loaded term to me. B.'s so damn smart that NASA saw fit to let him write software for the space program. And not accounting software, either. It's always been assumed that we would have a smart, talented child.

That hasn't been important to me, though. In fact, I think there's a part of me that hoped for a child who might be just average, someone I could love without placing the burdens of overexpectation on either of us. With being average, I could let her know that I love her for who she is, not because of the exceptional things she can do.

Music has always been one of the most important things in my life, even though I have no talent or skills in that area. I can't play any instruments. I certainly can't sing. I can't read music. I always wanted some musical talent or skill, but things didn't go that way. By the time I started piano lessons, I was 14 years old - impatient, short attention spanned, and so used to doing things that came easily that I had no drive to actually work at something I didn't have a natural aptitude for. It felt too much like failure. I quit after six months.

So, now I have a child who's showing signs of having an early aptitude for music. I've got to be honest, that's what I dreamed of when I thought of my future child. Someone who might share my love of music, but who might take it much further than I ever did. However, I'm terrified of walking the line this situation presents. I want to give her every opportunity to explore whatever she wants to explore, music or otherwise. But I don't want to be that parent who forces her own failed dreams onto her child. It's really easy to confuse what she wants with what I want, to let my own projected desires bury hers.

I wonder if her love of music is a combination of B.'s math-encrusted DNA and my insistance on standing five feet away from a speaker stack at a White Stripes show when I was six weeks pregnant. Whether it's environmental or fundamental, it feels good to know that we are responsible for this, that this is the person we have created. But my lord, what a huge responsibility it is.

So yesterday afternoon, after this conversation, I was a mess. Thrilled, proud, happy, and relieved to learn that it's not my projection, that Clara Jane really does have something. But also fearful of so much, mostly that I'll do something to screw this up for her. Ultimately, I want her to love music - or whatever it is she's supposed to love - and I want her to take it as far as she wants.

When we got home, I called my mom to give her the usual post-daycare update, along with the news that, duh, Clara Jane digs music more than the average 2-year-old.

Later in the conversation, my mom said, "Oh, I've got to read this to you. Do you know what animal you are in the Chinese zodiac?"

"I'm a rat."

"This is from some magazine Flo gave me. It's your Chinese horoscope for this year." She paused while she searched for my sign, then laughed. "It says you're exceptionally good with words and that in 2006, you'll make money from your written words. Or from selling your stuff on the internet or in a garage sale."

And I laughed, because some made-up hororscope in a grocery-line women's magazine managed to put my greatest hope for myself into words. I was an exceptional, gifted kid. I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing stories; I was writing before I could physically write. I had all the opportunities offered to me: a weekly gifted class in elementary school that fostered my creativity, some teachers along the way who vocally encouraged me and made it clear to me that I had a talent and a gift, parents who tolerated my creative bend even though I'm sure they worried about me being such a weirdo at times, bosses who've paid me to write, a husband who brings home the bacon so I can spend it on daycare and a day of coffeehouse chow one day a week while I wrestle with the book I've always dreamed of writing. Some of those opportunites, I squandered for various reasons, or flat-out didn't see as being opportunities. Others, I've taken and done my best with them.

And I know that's what Clara Jane will do. No one has a map or an instruction manual that gives explicit directions on how to best utilize the gifts we're given. We just do it, hopefully with the support of people who recognize and respect those gifts. I've had that, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure my child has that, too.

I'm also going to make sure she has a shuffle, because Lord knows that child needs her tunes:

1. Tanga, Rumba-Afro-Cuban - The Mambo All-Stars (She'll love this - bongos and horns.)
2. Caress Me Baby - Jimmy Reed (I hope she loves this, because Jimmy Reed makes some great dancing-around-the-house music.)
3. Not What You Want - Sleater-Kinney (She adores "I Wanna be Your Joey Ramone", loves to scream along with the "yeah yeah" chorus.)
4. We've Been Had - Uncle Tupelo (Another favorite, as she already recognizes the genius of Jeff Tweedy, all the more reason for us to move to Belleville.
5. Never Say Never - Romeo Void (Let's just skip this. I don't need her singing "I might like you better if we slept together" at her Methodist daycare.)
6. Atomic - Blondie (Drums! Behold the glorious drums!)
7. Something I Can Never Have - Nine Inch Nails (Um, yeah, let's hold off on this one, too.)
8. Keep Your Hands Off My Baby - Little Eva (Hand claps! Loads of hand claps! My adoration of early-'60s girl groups is actively being passed along to the next generation.)
9. Until the End of the World - U2 (She likes it, but it ain't "City of Blinding Light".)
10. Monkey Man - Rolling Stones (Monkeys and music? We're in Clara Jane's happy place right here.)