I Don't Know What Kind of Free Range Chicken '70s Childhood People Remember But Mine Was Survival

See this nice playset? The chains are plastic encased, like a latex wrap, around each link so that there are no pinched fingers, no accidental scrape from a rusty spot that will develop into tetanus while your precious angel sleeps.

The tire has rubber brackets sealing the rivets that fasten the chain so that your child's thighs don't come into contact with a nasty metal edge. Farther over, to the right of this photo, is a 'horsey' swing, but it's minus the metal horsey head that sometimes became jagged along the mane from exposure to the elements.

Of extreme note is the soft and supple swing seat, the kind of bottom-hugging provided so different from the flat slats that see-sawed you off if you sat in them too quickly.

This is a safe playset. I'm sure there was some sort of play-lab situation where clip boards and white-lab coated researchers were called in to take note of possible injurious situations. This is my kids' playset and this is their life in the 2000s.

Now, my childhood, the one from the early '70s, was a different one from the things that have been written about with regard to growing up before so much child injury and safety obsession.

I read what people remember from this time, the afternoons spent uncaged and unsupervised, and the words are cast with undeniable wistfulness for the free range days of the past.

I don't think that was a good thing. Because when I sit back and place myself in the days before needing deodorant and Clearasil, it's not with the same sighs of nostalgia of these '70s remembers. I sigh, loud and in disbelief, for the number of times we were in the emergency room. Stitches, casts, ace bandage wraps, and being woken every two hours in the night after a head injury. I don't recall free range but I do recall the free fall of those days.

You'd think my question would be Why would my mother buy us plastic guns that shot out corks, bows that did indeed shoot arrows--rubber tips do nothing to tone down the sting of a target hit, bouncy balls the circumference of an electric car and that sent you face down into coffee tables, and rusty gougey untethered unsafe, backyard play sets? Why? Maybe with that last one, I might be able to understand: dirt cheap light weight cash and carry aluminum.

I was talking to a friend this morning, and as conversation goes with good friends, we went from hello how was your coffee to "OMG Do you remember the dangerous toys we had?" in three texts.

Did you have the kid coffee percolator?
OMG Yes.
How about the lawn jarts?
Sweet Baby Jesus we had them too.
How about that dangerous red bouncy ball you rode?
Yup.
And the clackers that your brothers had that could crack a skull from across the street?
Yes. Both. The clackers and the brother that almost took my eye out.

I look at the safe and reassuring playset above, and think of my children on the day this structure went up. They watched from the kitchen windows while three workers hammered things into place, and after 10 questions of Can we go out yet? Is it done yet? It'll be done today, right? I gave the go ahead and my kids shoved their way out the kitchen door and had at it, not a worry in the world.

That was 15 years ago, and the playset is as safe now as it was that first day. We've had no reason to take it down either.

Contrast what my children's playset memories will be to the playset of my childhood, a metal seat and rod delight that lasted from Friday night to Saturday evening.

It was a saddle-like looking pumping station, made up of four seats. Each seat radiated out from the center and in front of the seat was a handle. You pumped, all four of you, as hard and as fast as you could and the seats would twirl around and now we know why the box was marked with a name I know I will never forget, Twirly Bird.

The first Friday afternoon, we set out to pump. Young, cautious, by Saturday afternoon we had become careless. I'll bet you thought I was going to say braver, maybe confident. Nope, we didn't respect the power of the spin, so careless is what we were. All four of us set to pumping, spinning, pumping, spinning faster, pumping, twirling, going going going spin spin spin! Until the pull became too much for a 42 pound weight of a little girl temporarily mad with spinning power and I (was there any doubt who that little girl was) went careening off my saddle seat and my small pinhead barely missed the cement block foundation of the basement of our house. I landed four feet away, on my back, staring as much as I was able, into the blue summer sky, cumulus clouds overhead, so serene and in juxtaposition to the terror I was unable to voice as I gripped the blades of grass with my fingers, desperate for them to hold me to the ground and keep me from falling in the sky above or below. I was as befuddled as a pilot in a pitch black night flying over an ocean. I could no longer discern up from down.

Next to drop like a shooting star was my brother. My little sister was tossed off like one of those white haired dummies on the shelf at a carnival. We were dropping like flies and after my brother threw up the green Kool-Aid we had had for lunch as he was sent projectile to the other side of the yard, my mother was done. She had the tenant from the floor below dismantle the Twirly Bird and she didn't tell him to take care with it, as I recall.

The Sears purchase was placed curbside, not even donated to a thrift center. My mother did not want any other child plucked into the atmosphere against their will again.

I tried to find a picture of the Twirly Bird for this post. I googled "World's most dangerous toys." I tried "World's most irresponsible toys." I searched "class action lawsuit toys." I tried "vintage but deadly toys."

Nothing.

The thing is, I know the Twirly Bird was real. The memory I have of complete disorientation is one no one forgets.

That Twirly Bird was real, as real as I'm sure the days of the '70s that others remember as free wheelin' exploratory fun.

Free wheelin' for them, but free hurling through space, for me.


Hurling, definition: the act of throwing or casting, usually with great force or strength. See: Twirly Bird.

 

* * *

What to Write When You Think "But My Life is Too Boring to Write About"

Think your life is one not interesting enough to write about? Wishing you had something to say from days that stretch back into what you think is ordinary?

Here's something for you to know: no one's life is ordinary and no one's days are ever without event.

I'm on BlogHer today talking about how to find the moments in our lives, and explore them for content.

Click over and give it a read, and then, what else? But start writing.


"What makes a story compelling is the feeling that you are reading over somebody's shoulder as they write in their diary, or that you're being whispered to and trusted with the words you'll soon hear...[read more on  Mining the Moments, on BlogHer]

xo

When Language is a Piece of You

There is no time in my life that when I think of myself, I don't do it without hearing the rise and the fall of the Spanish language. It is not a part that is separate from me, but the seed from which I grew.

The Spanish language runs through me like roots that mark a beginning. The sounds of el, la, ina, and ora, circle around me like the rings of a tree.  My family left their country amid words of Spanish and began their new lives in America, arriving with words of Spanish. They were unable to stay under their country's government, no matter how deep their desire to remain, but they were always able to stay in their language.

I have lived in America my entire life. But with the loss of my father, mother, and grandmother, the first generation to be in this country, I feel the slow pull away between me and my first language. I fear this separation and I know that I am a poor cover of the sound that my family brought with them.

My uneasiness comes from knowing that I am adrift without the original sound of my childhood. To hear Spanish, is to hear home. Spanish centers me, it takes me to who I am and without it, I don't see a road ahead of me. If I leave the Spanish language behind, who I am is gone. It is Spanish that binds me to my family's country. Spanish makes the ocean between here and there, disappear.

It will feel like loss to not have the sound of Spanish around me. It will take from my heart the way my father's death, my mother's, and my abuela's, did.

This year, the reaction to the sound of Spanish in this country has turned darker. It has moved in the direction of double takes, disapproval, unasked questions, spoken out loud assumptions. The clear disgust at not hearing English. Some shout out their demand, English! English!

I can't be without determination. I can't feel defeat. I can't feel despair. I can only commit to not be ashamed of speaking Spanish. I won't be made to feel inferior or judged because of it. It is the language that rings truer for me than English.

If I lose my Spanish, I lose my country.

And that may be the goal of the ugliness that is spreading across our nation.

We can't lie about what we feel in our hearts. Our language is more than what we speak with our tongues. It's what we say from our souls. And I will forever have Spanish at the core, as the heat and the spark, as the bridge across the distance of where I came from.

* * *

That One Time I Was Nature Mom

 Exhibit A:

-Black bean and brown rice crackers with sea salt for snacks.
-Gelatin without artificial color for safe jello jigglers.
-Wax paper bags (unbleached, take note) so plastic doesn't touch their 100% whole grain bread.
-An activity book for healthy outdoor play.

I have been feeling so disillusioned and depressed and blueblueblue over the state of our union, that I turned to what helps me heal and feel like I can breathe again. Because we have a long way to go in this election year and I need oxygen.

I turned to decluttering. Productive, visible results from my labor, the peace within of a cleared out shelf. But as I began to pull and shuffle and discard, what I found buried within white cabinets wasn't clutter as much as bearing witness to a woman who once held on to the ideal of the highest level of conscious parenting.

All natural, all chemical free, all healthy and wise and 100 percent in earnest.

Souvenirs of when I was Natural Mom. Natural mom , the one who wouldn't buy anything unless it had the word natural written all over the natural container in soybean-based ink at least five times. Seven if you count the back.

Natural value 100 percent natural waxed paper bags made with all natural ingredients that are natural from a natural environment using a natural process for a natural lifestyle! Great for packing natural snacks! (There's eight here, what a beautiful thing)

Not pictured in the photo above because they didn't fit are the GoGreenMama silicone ice cube trays for freezing home made baby food along with the 25-pound Happy Healthy Baby acid-free pages cookbook for making my own preservative-free baby food, and the baby food mill with BPA-free blades for making the baby food.

I am not poking fun at anyone who chooses this lifestyle. The endeavor and hope comes from a place of sincerity: wanting the healthiest world for our kids but but but... guess who won't go along with it? Guess who spends just one freakin' afternoon at a playdate where they have their first hit of cherry red kool-aid and my friends? THE HEALTHY HOME HEARTH IS OVER.

It's impossible to forget that summer weekday afternoon when my four-year-old son ran in through the front door, fresh with the first mustache of his life: a red one. Still licking the lifetime supply of powdered sugar off his lips, he cried, "I had something delicious at Jeremy's house today and I drank a whole container of it and all I can tell you is I was wishing so hard that Jeremy's mom was you!"

"Oh yeah? Yeah? Well, does Jeremy's mom hand-shred your co-op carrots on a bamboo grater?!"

Pffft. Most assuredly not.

If love can be this easily bought, then why the heckhellheck am I doing this Organic, Non-GMO, Gluten Free, Kosher Vegan Raw Handmade production of your lives? Why am I working two part-time jobs for the sole reason of Trader Joe's? I ask you, where are the brains in that?

So, dear children, if you ever find yourself wondering if your mother ever had any other chef than Chef Boyardee and Little Caesar's Friday into if it's Monday then it must be $5.00 20-piece chicken nugget night, please consult Exhibit A above.

*Also not pictured above: the Essential essential home oil-making kit every mom of a newborn needs.

Living Lavender was my favorite.

* * *

If Only Cher Had My Son

Cher can't do math. It's hard for her when people give her a phone number and they go too fast. Our house number has eight digits in it, I keep it written down on a piece of paper in my purse inside pocket so when I go to the post office to pick up my mail, I can give the clerk the first two numbers in the right order.

After 14 years, I still keep my best friend's phone number taped behind my kitchen wall calendar because I always dial 8-5-9 and it's 6-5-9.

Numbers strike terror in me.

+++

The first time I felt the prickle of a hot panic was in the first grade, with math. I had been able to do the problems along with the rest of the class until that morning, when there were smaller numbers sitting above bigger numbers. I stared at the white sheet and drew hash marks at the bottom of the page and tried to find a way to take seven things away from three things. The other kids in class finished and walked their sheets up to the teacher's wire basket while I tried to not scratch my stinging scalp wondering how this could be done.

I had to stay in and miss recess until I found out how to take a big piece out a little piece. I never did and the teacher wrote in red, “NEEDS TO PRACTICE HER SUBTRACTION.” I remember this because the letters were big enough to block out the two rows of four problems each.

One day I knew how to do math, the next day I didn't. Things had changed and I don't know how, but everyone in the class seemed to have been told about the shift from adding together, which I could do, to taking away, which I found out that thinking flipping the numbers would work, was wrong.

By the time we moved out of second grade and subtraction and into third grade and multiplication, I had grown too scared of numbers to understand what the teacher was saying, and the worry that I wouldn't understand blocked my brain from following along in the book. Too hard too hard too hard. Numbers didn't look the same way to me that they did to the other kids.

 

When it came to learning how to tell time, I felt the locked knee paralysis of not being able to decipher the code of numbers again. Everyone in class was able to answer the teacher's question about what the clock on the classroom wall read. I wasn't. My mother thought that having my own watch would help and so one day she came home with a paper bag from the department store. Inside was a square box with the gold letters TIMEX etched along the bottom. I felt a wide-eyed panic.

Please don't be a watch please don't be a watch. Of course, that's what it was. A neon orange patent leather band with Snoopy on the dial's face. Large psychedelic numbers swam in wavy shapes around Snoopy and they matched the near fainting I felt at what I knew would happen with a watch this hard to ignore. “What time is it, Alexandra?” Hell if I would ever know the answer to that question.

My mother made me wear the watch to school, she strapped it as tight as she could but when you're 56 pounds, and the watchband could circle a small cat, there's no way to keep a neon wrist undercover. When I got to the classroom, I tried to keep my sweater over my wrist but I forgot my head at recess and was leaning away while pulling at the step's metal railing and when I looked up, my eyes locked on nosy Jackie Peterson's face. I saw her mouth open with a flash of the devil when she lit on a flash of orange at the end of my arm. Since everyone knew I couldn't tell time, she screamed, “Alexandra! What time is it! You can't tell us because you don't know!”

After that, I would wear the watch to school but take it off and hide it in my pocket.

Bad at math, bad at numbers, and tens of stories more about the struggle in grade school, high school, college, when it came to work with numbers.

+++

I have three children, they have no fear of math and took to it with a love for patterns, completing puzzles, pride in working through problems and finding the answer. They know how much I am in awe of their minds and ability to learn things with a relaxed ease I know nothing about.

My children try to teach me, they explain things to me with a tenderness and patience that makes a lump in my throat. “See, mom, if you look at things this way, you'll recognize a pattern.” “I can't, you guys, I don't see it like that.” “Just try it, try to think of it a different way this time.”

There's a field trip I'll be chaperoning with my youngest son's seventh grade class soon. It's one of the last field trips I'll take with my children, the parents around here are heavily involved in kids and school and the chance that your name gets chosen is about every two years. My name was picked, I won the lottery. The class is going to a financial park. I have to arrive an hour early for training and learning the day's session of teaching basic accounting to my son's class.

My scalp is prickly. My mind is already stiffening up with the wall that doesn't allow numbers in.

“Auggie, I don't know how I'm going to do this field trip. I don't want to miss it, I won't get another chance to go, I know it. But it's a finance park, it's math.”

“I already have it figured out. I'm going to make sure I'm in your group and I'll stand right next to you. I'll answer the questions before you have to ask them. You don't have to worry. I'll be there.”

+++

My son brought some worksheets home today, he's working on a speed record with his Rubik's Cube. He explains how any pattern can be solved by understanding the steps needed to get there. I want to follow along, and I concentrate hard. But the squares look random to me. He walks me through the steps he's taking to get the cube's squares aligned. He's almost finished, all that's left is his favorite part--the satisfying last turn of solving the puzzle, when he turns to me with the cube.

“Here, mom, you do it. You'll never get to finish a Rubik's cube on your own so you do the final click.”

My heart heaves with the love he has for me, for his patience and his acceptance of who his mother is.

I'm bad at math, I'm as bad as Cher is in taking down a phone number. But I'm about to do one thing that Cher has never done. I reach over and accept the offering from my son, and I give the cube its final twist.

 

 

* * *

Why Old Moms Tell New Moms, "Enjoy Them While You Can!"

In the days when venturing out happened with a bitty one snuggled into a front carrier and two more just as bitty in my double stroller, older moms would pass me and glance with longing. "Ahhh, I miss those days. Enjoy them while you can! They grow up before you know it!," they would sigh a warning as their eyes misted over.

As if I hadn't been hearing that since first becoming a mother.

I knew what the older moms were saying was true, in fact, children do grow up. Of course they do, but it didn't feel like that was something that was going to happen in my life any time soon. When you're drowning in the endless days of motherhood, how do you even digest advice like that?

From the moment my oldest child was born, I was his favorite being. Only I would do. When he was five days old, I walked into his room and just at the sound of my voice, his eyes began searching out. Followed by the cry for me, the wail, actually. He had such an enveloping need for me that my husband would have to lift him up and hold him overhead to see me when I disappeared behind the shower curtain, trying for a shower for the first time in days.

I couldn't take it anymore and my husband's shoulders started breaking down so one day at the discount homegoods store when I saw a see-through shower curtain, I knew I had the answer to our sanity. Now everyone could see me in my full naked glory, just like they all screamed for. My child could not live without me remaining in his sight, I was that essential to his survival.

 

My son and I lived a co-existence, one rightly filled with highs and lows. It was hard to tell where I left off and he began. At three years old, when I would ask him what he wanted for lunch, he'd answer, “What mama have!” I was submerged in motherhood during those days - loving him so, and at the same time, falling apart with the fear that things would always be this consuming. 

 

I didn't know about the seasons of parenting. Just as with his finger sucking, that I thought would last forever. And his climbing on chairs and falling off onto the kitchen hardwood floor, his determined screams of refusal when it was time to take a nap and therefore be separated from me ... I thought each one a static condition, and eternal.

 

But life is fluid, dynamic, and though we see children growing up when they belong to other people, it is impossible for us to imagine that tomorrow comes for us. Will our own children not always be an infant, a toddler, a child in grade school? Nope.

So when that same baby of mine, who once imagined that the oxygen he needed to breathe could only come from me, left for college and found his own air, I couldn't find mine. It turned out he was right, because now I'm the one searching for how to breathe without him here.

The memories I have of holding his small body in my arms are some of the sweetest in my life, but I never thought the moments would end this quickly. When did he grow up? Because I had my eye on him the whole time, and I watched for changes.

 

The days slipped by because children don't grow up little by little, they do it overnight. You go from leaning down to snap their size 2T onesies to standing in front of them, your arms reaching up as you help them with their tie on graduation day. Like that.

Childhood is temporary, even on the days it feels permanent.

Older moms on the bike path who would pass me with reminders of the whooshing of the days, I would hear them, I would. But how could I tell them Thanks for the reminder I know you mean well but it doesn't feel like the half-second that you remember it as because I am knee deep in the seasons of babyhood.

You have to be at the far end of anything before you can look back. That's the only way it works. How can you see your starting point if you're not at the finish line? In those days of early parenting, when women feel it their duty to tell you, “Enjoy every bit of it!,” I didn't want to reflect on that.

Because I just wanted one freakin' second to myself.
Because those days of early parenting are trial by error/ baptized by the flaming hot fire/flying by the seat of your pants.

 

No one can tell you what those days are like because you have no point of reference. Loving those minutes so much that every thought is about your children, their well being, what they need, do they have it all? The other half of your body and soul are falling apart while you watch. How do you explain to a parent that both ends of the spectrum are part of life with children? That you can't untangle either one and would they believe you, if you tried? 

 

That's why “Enjoy them when they're little!” doesn't work. I want to say it myself, to so many new moms, but I catch myself and swallow the words because I know. Just as when it was said to me, the woman with three children hanging from her neck like necklaces, it's impossible to project that far out with little chubby fingers waving in front of your face. When your days are made of four-hour sleep the night before and your lunch is left-over finger food from toddler's plates while you stand at the sink rinsing something out for the twenty-ninth time that day, who's going to believe, "Enjoy it while you can!"

 

Had you told me that one day this 20-pound baby of mine sitting on my husband's shoulders, red faced from screaming on the other side of the shower curtain for his mama while I for the love of God took just a three-minute shower for the first time in five days for God's sake, would today be half an inch shy of six feet tall and grabbing for the car keys, I'd tell you that happens to someone else's child -- but not mine. Mine will always need me there in front of his vision, won't he?

 

If I could say anything to new parents, it would be this: Smile when you can, cry when you have to, and know that where you are now, is part of the beautiful seasons of your life.

 

You don't need me to tell you to enjoy them while you can.

I have no doubt that you already are, and know how -- in your own way.

 

Just like I did.

 

 

NaBloPoMo Day Six and I'm Already Digging Deep

Why do I love NaBloPoMo? Because when we've gone through the easier to write posts, the lists, the reactionary, the rants, the stream of consciousness, we open the mental vault and see what else we can find. In today's post for National Blog Posting Month, I'm remembering sweet childhood moments. One in particular, of afternoons spent at our east side neighborhood Italian grocery store.

* * *

When I was little, I would go grocery shopping with my grandmother. She loved the Italian market in our neighborhood. She didn't know English, aside from saying "Sank you" in thanks for service, and "Yes yes" in response to any question in the world, so I would go where she had to go, and work as her translator.

We were a household of six children, supported by one widowed mother and cared for by one loving, affectionate Colombian grandmother, our abuela. We didn't shop for anything fancy or any specialty items at the Italian market, but my grandmother came from a country where you bought your food fresh daily so we walked there. If it rained or snowed, we took the bus. They had what she wanted at the small grocery store, meat she recognized, tomatoes onions garlic cilantro, the way she remembered them being in South America.

There was a single door that opened to the store, people were always leaving or coming, and someone would have to step aside to let the other person through. When the way was clear, I'd heave on the heavy door and let my grandmother go first. As soon as you walked in, you stood at the deli counter. Slices of Italian beef were next to tubs of dark olives steeped in olive oil. My grandmother would point and a non verbal exchange with hands and smiles transpired between my abuela and the butcher and a few minutes later, he would carefully weigh our purchase, looking up to her for approval then tightly wrap our night's meal in paper, handing it to us with a laugh and a smile.

There was a supermarket that had just opened in our neighborhood, four blocks from our house, but with canned meat and frozen vegetables, boxed pancakes and potatoes made with water, it only convinced my grandmother of witchcraft. I wanted to be at the grand supermarket and was ashamed to be in the small grocery store--it was an Italian market run by immigrants just the same as we were. The American kids at my school went to the big market that was surrounded by a parking lot equal in size to the square footage of the big store. At the front entrance, leading you into the supermarket as proof of its superiority, were automatic doors.

I would plead my case for the supermarket every day that we passed it, "Abuelita! You don't need anyone with you to open the doors! All you have to do is stand in front of them and order Open Sesame! Like this!" And I would jump in front to show her the magic.

"I have you," she said unimpressed."I don't need to worry about not having anyone with me." And with that, we would continue to our Italian market so my grandmother could do her real shopping.

The few times we did go into the supermarket, because of the kindness in my grandmother's heart, we saw aisles of boxes stacked to the ceiling with factory made cookies and cake mix along with ice cream by the gallon tubs. I wanted all of it: the plastic wrapping, the uniform filling of the rows of Nabisco cream wafers. I was drawn to the efficiency and the modern appeal of assembly line food. So perfectly arranged and neat, like Americans.

But no dice, whatever my grandmother bought to feed the mouths in our house had to be recognizable as coming from nature. My grandmother had to see the hands that rolled the pasta, she had to witness the sausage as it was weighed. Hand packed and hand made was the only way she would buy ice cream. From the bologna we'd see linked by the Italian butcher while we watched through the glass counter to the bread that was sold unsliced and whole and then tossed in a paper bag. No Wonder brand white bread from a bag of 24-slice count for us, and we could wish until our eyes crossed for blister packs of ham with dots of cheesespread from the supermarket--it would still never find its way home to us.

We would buy no more than my abuelita and I could carry home, two bags for each of us. My face would burn red as we passed people I knew, our plain brown paper bags instead of plastic that they gave out at the big supermarket. I worried the whole way home that we smelled of salami and olives, which of course we did.

I never hated the small neighborhood grocery store, I just didn't want another reminder of how different we were from the blazing beauty of all things American. The Italian store was dark wood and crowded, the small windows out front barely let enough light in to see to the back of the store. Not more than one person could go down an aisle at the same time. The floor creaked and leaned to the left and when a fresh layer of sawdust was spread in front of the butcher's window, it became slippery. I didn't want to be at the Italian store, but neither did I want to ever give up time being with my grandmother. Being alone with her always won.

In 2010, I read in the newspaper that the original Italian market closed. They moved to a larger, new location. The creaking wooden floors washed down with bleach every night would give way to black and white neat, even tile. The meat counter that was our first stop, right next to the front doors where my grandmother would motion for the best cut of meat for the most affordable price, was now in the back with a modern space of its own, apart from the rest of the store.

And there were automatic doors.

You think I'd be telling myself dreams come true if you wait long enough.

The funny thing is, I cried when I saw the picture of the new market. There were orange awnings with the family name in white swirls of scrolls over large rectangular windows. In between the expanse of windows, were doors, the kind that open by themselves. All you have to do, is stand in front of them.

You don't even need anyone with you.

* * *

Do We Ever Leave The Land of the Uncool

High School: when no one could even get my name right.

In the nicest part of McDonald's, the section where they have the leather chairs and a loveseat, seven teenage girls sit. They're texting each other, instagramming, and squealing with each "like" they get on their posts.

I'm sharing a lunch with my high school son, my middle boy, and we hear everything the teens are saying. I ask him how these girls could have so many friends. He shrugs and says, "People do," and he goes back to his burger. I stop chewing so I can hear them better, because I have always wanted to know, Why do some of us have the secret to social life? Will these girls fall away from how effortless friendship feels right now? Do we lose this sense of feeling at ease with others, do only some of us? Will we all?

"Oh!," one of the girls shrieks. "She just liked my selfie!" The other one grabs her phone to look and asks, "Why do you even like her?" "I'm only stalking her to find out about her boyfriend's friend. She doesn't know I can't stand her." I ask my son if people in his school pretend to like each other a lot. "Some might," he answers again without looking over at them as they leave.
---------------
I was never a teen in the midst of giggling girls. I was never among a crowd that numbered in the sevens. I was eighty-nine percent of the time on my own, inside my head. My teen life was spent in the land of the uncool.

Back then, when I met someone new, I would cross my fingers that maybe they would turn into a friend, but instead of smiles back when I initiated conversation, it was knitted brows and pursed lips that came back in reaction to my not knowing when to stop with any topic of discussion. I couldn't help it, I had a head full of trivia and nothing that I loved to do more than share little known facts and historical surprises. Believe me, I had no shortage of things to talk about. And each one, at the ready.

Kids would spend a few minutes with me and then excuse themselves, saying, "I'm going to go talk to Jackie now," I'd smile at them and nod, "yeah, sure, Ok. I'll see you at school Monday!" And they'd give me a tight lipped smile back, no teeth showing, a quick look back but without the energetic, "Yeah! For sure!" that I hoped I'd hear.

Then, when I was 15, during our school's morning announcements, some news came out that could have changed my world. The department store downtown was going to be interviewing for a candidate to win a scholarship to their charm school. Charm School is what I needed! This was it! My big chance to learn how to do everything right. I would learn how to eat in an expensive restaurant if someone ever took me to prom or homecoming. I would learn how to waltz if someone ever asked me to dance at a wedding reception. I would learn how to walk with my shoulders back and how to keep eye contact. I would learn etiquette and how to carry conversation so it would be equal for both parties. I clicked my pen and wrote down the date, Saturday, and the time, 9:00 a.m., at Boston Store.

The Friday night before Interviewing Saturday, I set my clothes out: a pair of brand new sailor pants, a thin as an extension cord white suede belt, a red ribbed sailor top and white suede platform sandals that matched my belt. I snuck a red chiffon neck scarf from my older sister's room to tie around my neck, I planned to have the bow twisted to the side. I bought new blush, "apricot sparkle." It was a cream form, and cost almost a dollar more than powder.

I set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. and tried to get the beauty sleep Seventeen magazine told me I needed so my complexion would not be sallow and my eyes would be bright. On Saturday morning, I arrived at the department store by 8:30 a.m. for the interview. It had taken me two buses to get there. I had only been up to the third floor of the store before, but the offices holding the session were on the 7th floor. I got on the elevator and pushed 7. When the doors opened, I looked out into a hallway that held every beautiful teenage girl in the city. Their tall, long bodies with hair to match, leaned against walls, sat in front of occupied chairs, and rested against window sills. There wasn't a single girl who looked anything like me there. There wasn't a single girl there wearing pants.

When I checked in with another tall woman who had a clipboard, she wrote my name down and gave me a number. She told me I probably wouldn't get seen because of the amount of girls that had answered the call. Still, I wasn't going to go back home after taking two buses to get downtown before 9:00 a.m. I would wait until they told me I had to leave and locked the doors behind me.

At a little before noon, the woman with the clipboard shouted my number. I gathered myself up from the hard floor and with wobbly legs and a pounding heart I followed her to the office where the interviews were happening. There, a woman sat behind a faded wood desk. To me, at that time, I guessed her to be about 50 years old. She had black glasses that sat at the end of her nose that she kept pushing back up to her eyes with her sharp red fingernails.

She asked me to keep standing. Then to turn. Then to walk away and then turn and walk back to her. She asked me to turn sideways, then to lean the side of my body against the cold wall, with one hip jutting out. I did all those things while I watched her write. She made some notes, had me repeat my name and phone number, and then asked me for my pictures.

"I don't have any." I panicked. No one had mentioned pictures.

"Well. Thank you. You can go now."

I stayed, I was ready for the interview part.

"You can go now."
"I'm ready for the interview. I can talk about any question you ask me."
"This was the interview. You can go now."
"Didn't you want me to talk?"

She put her pen down and peered up at me. Then she stared. She asked, "What did you think today was for?"

"An interview," I told her, "for charm school."

"This was the interview and we have other girls to see."

I looked down at my feet, flustered. I had so much information to tell her, from all the books I had read. Then I noticed that the zipper on my pants had been down the entire time. My cheeks burned, both from embarrassment as well as the excess of apricot sparkle. I thought about how I never got anything right and never fit in anywhere. I stood, ready to go, but before I left, I turned around. "When do we find out if we won?"

"We'll let your school know."

I was sure to thank her for her time.

On Monday morning, back at school, girls buzzed about the interviews. "Do you know anyone that went? Who would go? I can't believe anyone would go. You'd have to be beautiful. I heard Antoinette Omdahl went." I stood frozen against my locker. Antoinette Omdahl, the senior went? She was the girl with the most perfect legs, a ballet dancer, a cheerleader, on student council, prom queen. Her teeth looked like they had been put in place by a master. Why didn't I know the interviews were for girls like Antoinette Omdahl? Why did I think I was one to go?

The school morning announcements began, and toward the end, our principal cleared her throat. In her thick Italian accent, she began, "It is my great pleasure to announce that one of our girls was chosen for the Boston Store Charm School scholarship. Antoinette Omdahl is going to be our ambassador with Boston Store."

Antoinette Omdahl. Popular, athletic, always smiling and giggling. The senior who skipped down the hallways, her shiny hair bouncing behind her. Her hair never needed to be tied down when it was humid. Why did I think I belonged somewhere where she was? This was another event that I thought I understood. My life was missed marks and misunderstandings. How did people know not to do things, when I didn't?
------------
The girls at McDonald's begin to squeal again. "Oh.My.God. You guys, look at this-I can't believe she posted this. And that Keith even likes her. Whatever."

I've forgotten about the story of charm school, until today. And how much being cool mattered. I tell my 18-year-old son the story about the charm school interview, my zipper being down, my cheeks ablaze with apricot sparkle. How I waited for the interviewer to ask me for my favorite Louisa May Alcott book, to which I would have answered Jo's Boys. He laughs while eating his french fries and almost spits out his soda. "You're so funny, mom. I wish I could have known you back then."

The last 20 years of my life have been spent as a mother. I have been with my children who accept me as naturally as sunshine and without question. Their hearts so full of love, they listen to me prattle about facts and the books I've read and the things I've learned, and look at me as if I'm the most fascinating person they've ever known.

They make me feel like I just graduated from charm school.

 

* * *

Just Two Women in the Kitchen

I stretch my legs out from on top of the red vinyl stool. I'm careful to stay on the right because the seat is split and the foam is coming out from the other side, leaving the plastic to jut up and out, like my Abuelita's black knife. I think of how the edge could slice through a tomato like a blade. My father wants to take this chair and keep it in the garage for his tools but I won't let him. The red sparkles shine through the cover and fill the spaces like tiny galaxies.

It is early afternoon and the sun is streaking in through the kitchen windows. I love to be here in the kitchen more than anything. I am so close to where my Abuela is happiest, I stand inches from her in the small room and I don't know how she stops the urge from stepping away so she has space.

When people's skin gets too close to mine, I feel like I lose the air around me. I have to change how I am and pay attention to how I breathe when someone comes close to me. I don't want them thinking how I am too loud or too fast or that they'll hear my voice shake or say something to me and then I'll have to answer them when they are this close.

Soon, my brothers and sisters will be home from school. My grandmother is getting the rice and chicken started and my baby brother and sister are sleeping. I am waiting to start the most important job, the meal can't begin without my work - that's what my Abuela tells me. I gather the slices of tomatoes and strings of onion that my grandmother has set aside and I toss them into the hot oil in the pan. I jump when the wet from the tomato and onion sizzle and spark as they hit the pan, but I can never say no to the thrill. I go back to my grandmother and her cutting board, I know she will have the garlic smashed and ready for me to carry over in a measured tablespoon. I walk to the stove, my right hand cups under the garlic so nothing tips out. I clank on the inside of the pan to release the garlic in one plop.

Wiping her hands on her apron, my grandmother comes to stand next to me.

“You can go now, mija, the hard part is done.”

“Can I stir?”

“Claro. Si. Of course!" She lifts me up while I hold her weathered wooden spoon, the rim of the edges now burnt brown, and I hear the rasp of my back and forth scraping against the bottom of the pan.

“It's all brown now, Abuelita. The rice can go in.”

"You know just when it is time, little one." I smile and nod, I'm never wrong about the timing of the oil. Setting me down, my grandmother scoops out the rice from the pot next to us where it has been soaking in water overnight. We wait to hear the gurgle of a hard boil and then she stirs everything together, covering rice with water fold after fold. Leaning down, she checks the stove's flame, being sure to lower it to the precise flicker she needs for a simmer.

I set the table with our purple plates, but I wish they were larger. The ones we have aren't big enough to hold the amount of rice I want. Everything is finished and we have time before the rice is ready and we have to leave to get my brother from school.

My Abuela reaches across the stove and pours a cup of espresso, mixing it with warmed milk from the small pot. She divides it into two separate cups and hands one to me. There is an equal amount in both. I blow across the steam the way she has taught me, until it is cool enough to sip. Then I take the first cautious lick. The warmth spreads down my throat and across my shoulders, I feel it slide down filling the entire of my stomach.

We are two women in the kitchen. One is five, the other seventy-five, but we feel no difference. We have earned this time, to blow and sip, while we are across from each other. There is quiet between us, but it is anything but silence.

“Ponque?” she asks, wanting to know if I want cake.

She laughs when she sees my eyes pop open. I love cake and my grandmother knows this, she has hidden a piece for me, away from my five brothers and sisters. “Si, Abuela, Si!” From behind the sliced rolls in the bread cabinet, she has a torte that is wrapped in re-used wax paper. Placing it in my lap, like she's trusting me with a hummingbird, she hands me the square. I open it and see dense baked apple, the white frosting cracks as my teeth break into it.

My grandmother is small, with thick waves of still dark hair. She is awake when I first come down in the morning and she is awake when I go upstairs for the night. She never tires, she never sits. But in these afternoons, while the others are deep in sleep or away at school, she takes time.

Tomorrow's dinner may be pork sausages with quartered cabbage. The day after that a thick oxtail soup. I know the meals will be different, but they will always begin with me doing the most important work. Laying the foundation for everything that is to come when I toss in the tomatoes, the onions, the garlic.

It's the hardest part, my Abuela tells me, and I do it well.

 

* * *

Here Is a Story About Hair

I have spent one-third of my life growing out my hair. One-third wishing for long hair. And the last third daydreaming of long hair. In my wide-awake state, I would see myself with masses of silky tresses in such abundance that they necessitated gathering up in one hand and tossing across my shoulder like a rising tsunami before I could lean in and take a sip from a drinking fountain.

In the second grade, my brown tights snugly pulled down over my scalp served as my long hair stand-in. When the tights were in the laundry from their multiple use, then it was on to a sepia-tone bath towel artfully twisted into a top knot so that I could work it as one of The Supremes. Which Supreme I was didn't matter because all three had hair and enough of it to pile on top of a head.

My life and my hair are a simple relationship: I have always wanted a lot of it.

Age 2:  Here I am, trying to grow my hair out. Doesn't matter if I'm the one on the right or my brother is. We look the same.

 



(heyhey let's not talk about how kids were allowed to bounce along in the front seat, all right? dear LORD I hope my father is just parked for a cute photo opp and not actually DRIVING)

Age 3:  Growing my hair out.



Again, pay no mind to who is me versus who is the brother. *Surprise bonus Spanish lesson: on top of my head are the Colombian equivalent to corkscrew curls, known as "cachumbos" Repeat after me, kah-choom-bohs. Good job. **Also, what the heck, why is my mouth always open.

Age 4:  Growing my hair out.

You know the rules, my brother and I are interchangeable. (finally learned to close my mouth)

 

Age 5:  Growing my hair out, but thinking that maybe I can dance the time away while I wait.

 



Let's slap any old dress on and see if I can coax a tendril along.

Age 6:  Still growing my hair out. Is it Alexandra? Is it her brother? Doesn't matter, the hair is still not there. For either of us.





But I'm giddy with hope that maybe Santa will bring the hair I asked for.

 

Age:  Hair!

 



Age is Who cares I've got hair!

Age 18:  Hair Nation continues and just in time for Flash Dance/Jennifer Beals lookalike contest.



An inch of frosted ice eye shadow placed on the lid directly over your pupil will make your eyes pop! Not look like a Martian like your jackass soon to be ex boyfriend says.

 

Age 30:  I love having hair so much that I pay people to take pictures of it.

 



  Pirate blouse borrowed from Jerry Seinfeld

 

Age 32:  I finally have enough hair to be a Supreme!

Piles and piles of hair for miles! My bun is my lovechild.

Age 34:  I started having babies. They snatched my husband bald headed and tore at my scalp like cats fighting off a bath. I had no choice at 2 o'clock one afternoon except for Great Cuts, only $9.99 on Tuesdays and doesn't it look like it.

 



Just give me something chopped. And flat. Maybe parted down the middle. PERFECT.

 

Age 42:  I stopped having babies. For the next years, life will be a repeat of Ages 1-8: Trying to grow hair out.

Current State:  Hair is grown out due to secret hair-encouraging diet!

 



   Secret is Entemann's marble fudge cake. One piece daily.

 

Now along with wearing babies I can also wear my hair in a bun.

 



So glad I spent a third of my life growing my hair out so it could live on top of my head.
 

Again...



Whoa! Ease up on that athletic hair band especially when you don't do athletics.

and Again..



More secret hair growing recipe. This one is hair vitamin chocolate ice cream malt special.

and Again.





Experimenting with a new bun style: I call this one the split bow.

My Abuela used to crack herself up with a joke she told. She never got through it without busting into cackles along with an awful lot of thigh slapping (her own). It went like this, “An old woman went to her hairdresser. When she got there, she told her ::gasp-chortle-snort:: “Cut my hair so I don't look like an old woman anymore!” So the hairdresser cuts it all off, stands back and says, ::sputter-choke-choke:: “There! Now you look like an old man!” *abuela passes out from wheezing*

It is because of that joke, that I will never cut my hair.

The hair shall grow wild, free, (except for the expert color they do at Clementine's omg) until the day I look like a witch in the woods.

Too late. Kids, go get mama's broom.

----------------------

It's an old-fashioned Blog Hop! One topic: My Life in Hair, featuring some of the internet's finest. Click on the links below and see what they have to say about Their Life In Hair:

Lisa Rosenberg of smacksy

Ann Imig of annsrants
 

Shari Simpson of Dusty Earth Mother

Tarja of The Flying Chalupa

Vikki Reich of Up Popped a Fox

 

Nancy Davis Kho of Midlife Mixtape

 

 

* * *

The First of Fourth of Julys

It's the end of our day, but my grandmother is packing sliced sausage, a metal tin of saltines, and bottles of Hamm's beer into a brown box. My mother calls out to my father to remember the bottle opener. We are, the entire houseful of us, readying to take flight. I look outside the kitchen window and see near darkness. Where can we be going, and packing food for it? I chew on my thumbnail.

We have a blanket and sweaters. We sit, little children on adult laps, seven in a car made for five. Driving out of our neighborhood and turning into the streets we only travel on Sunday afternoons. But it's night.

My fingers are in my mouth again and my Abuela brushes them down with a grazing slap.

I ask my father, “A donde vamos, papa?” I have to know where we are going.

 

He blows cigarette smoke from the side of his mouth out of the rolled down driver's window. “Al lago,” he says. To the lake.

In the dark? To swim in the night? I pull the collar of the red and white striped T shirts that my mother bought for the four of us into my mouth and start sucking.

“You need to stay near us,” my mother reaches for my father's cigarette and takes a quick puff. I barely ever see this and every time I do, it feels like something too private for me to witness.

“No running,” she orders. “It will be dark.”

She turns to look at me and my brother. We are the youngest ones. “No running.”

“Si, mama.” I answer for my brother.

We arrive at the lake, the one we go to on Sundays. It is a weeknight, but we are here. I hear voices and lean forward to peek out the window. There are so many cars here that it looks like the used car lot we went to for my father's car.

I leap off my Abuela's lap after my sisters leave the car and my mother catches me. “You're running," she warns. My grandmother finds my hand and gives the food to my older sisters to carry. My father and mother walk in front of us, her arm linked into his. He says something too quiet for me to hear and my mother laughs.

Over the voices, I hear the sound of pops. They are close, but muffled. We move with the crowd, and I bite the edge of my bottom lip because it's getting hard to follow my father in front of us. He is turning and dodging but my grandmother is slow and I don't want to lose him because I am little and we are far from home with my Abuela who doesn't speak English.

I start to run again. My mother turns around and I stop.

“Mama!” I call out, wondering if my voice will be as loud in the night as it is in the day. “Mama! Wait for us!”

"Daughter! M'ija!” She calls back to me, but keeps walking. “You worry all the time.”

I do. I am always scared. I don't understand what we do and I never know where we go.

I feel caught. Between the house that feels safe where we all speak the same language, and being here, outside, where our voices are the only ones in Spanish.

I am between worlds again.

“Why worry, daughter?”

I can't explain.

My father claps when we find an open space of grass, and my Abuela spreads our blanket. The seven of us sit, shoulders and knees against backs. All around, there are people next to people and no place to walk in between. The grass is wet and soaks through. I want to stand but don't dare in the darkness. I see no one else standing off of their blankets and I know right away that we did things wrong again.

The blanket we brought is the wrong kind. From the corner of my eye, I see that the family next to us has food that I know is American. Not our sausage, not the bright red salty kind that my father likes. We always bring the wrong things.

We don't know how to live in America. No one in my family ever worries about how we don't do things right, except for me.

We sit, I don't know what we wait for. The crowd is murmuring, and then there is silence. A sound like a whizzing arrow slices through the air and then a crack of thunder. I scream and my Abuela pulls me into her. "Mi chinita, my little girl," her voice is soothing. I push my head inside her thin summer sweater and I rest there.

There is no time to breathe before the next booms start. The pounding of  sound comes one after the other and I tremble with each one.

I have never heard anything like this except in a storm. How long before the rain makes us wet?

My legs feel the ground rumble, and the wild thunder continues. I throw my hands over my eyes and keep them squeezed shut inside my grandmother's sweater. I breathe in and a smell like the wooden matches my Abuela uses in the kitchen fills the air. I want to be home.

There is a round of continuous pops and I think that surely, this time, the thunder will bring rain. I keep my eyes closed and shiver, anticipating how we'll be wet any minute.

I hold the smooth buttons on my Abuela's sweater between my fingers. Twirling each one back and forth, I count to ten. It will make the time waiting for things to end go faster if I count each one. There is a moment of silence that stretches into minutes, and then, the thunder is gone. I open my eyes and look up. I see my father standing. 

“The fireworks were better in Colombia,” he says with his hands on his hips. His voice sounds thin after the booms of the night. "They were more exciting." I wonder how they could have something over there, that is from here.

  

My father turns and bends down over my mother. She lifts her face up to him and he offers her his two hands. She takes them both. They are happy.

 

* * *
 

*My father had only three Fourth of Julys in this country. He died three years after coming to America.

__________________________________

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The Years Don't Lessen: On a Father's Day Without a Father

The first time that I saw Pirates of the Caribbean, it was with my husband and our three children. There is a moment within seconds of the movie starting that Orlando Bloom crosses the screen, and it knocks the wind out of me. “Oh! That looks just like my dad!,” I gasp.

“Cool, mom,” say my kids.

“No,” I say, “I mean it. It really does.”

But they have already stopped listening and keep sucking on their Sour Patch Kids, while I sit, frozen. They can't understand. For the next 27 times that Orlando pops up on the screen I call out how he could be my dad. My kind children politely look at me, and nod.

I haven't seen my father since the beginning of first grade, and now I have him in front of me, larger than life, for 90 minutes.

“My dad. It’s my dad.” I whisper, but I know I'm saying it to myself.

* * *

My father had skin the color of shiny copper and eyes that were green with flecks of yellow. When he smiled, he made me grin so wide I thought my skin would crack.

Growing up, we had a radio in the kitchen, a beige plastic rectangle with gold colored dials. The station was set to AM radio and The Beatles were always playing one of their Top 10 singles. I would hear the music from whatever part of the house I was in and come running, ready to dance the Twist for my father.

He couldn’t hold back his laughter at seeing me shake my five-year-old body back and forth while I sang for him, "Ooooooh he was just seventeeeeen!” Laughing and clapping, his smile opened into double laugh lines on the left side of his cheek. They would get so deep that they looked like I drew them in with black magic marker.

My parents were from Colombia, South America, but coming to the United States didn’t stop them from having the parties they were used to having there. In our basement, their old records would be pulled out: Carlos Gardel was the favorite. My father, holding a brown bottle of beer in his hand and his always present cigarette perched on his lips, would slide his feet back and forth until he was in the middle of the basement floor. I would secretly watch, hidden around the corner of the steps. Seeing him dancing with his eyes closed, lost in the music, was more than I could bear. I would blow my cover and run to him. My summer nightgown streaming behind me and my bare feet slapping against the cold cement floor, I jumped into his arms. Finally, I would be there, his cheek scratching against mine and pressing into his neck to breathe in Old Spice. I wanted him more than anything else in the world.

My father didn’t talk very much, he mostly laughed. He would wink, I swear it was only to me, and I would cover my mouth with both hands to stop from exploding. My father knew how he was my everything, and it was not something he ever took lightly. Each gesture to me was a grand one and his magic was in making time stand still. He could freeze a moment by looking into my eyes and all around me became distant and fell away. All that was left was just my father, and me, and that was the world.

I was in love with my father. I would wait at the end of the day for him to come home from work, my forehead leaning with all my might against the front screen door so I could see as far out as possible while I watched for him. Then, there, in his grey work overalls, I would spot him. Like a horse bursting through a gate, I galloped down our front steps. Taking two steps at a time I would begin shouting, "Papi!" When he saw me, he would stop walking and crouch down, and wait. It was then that his dimples would appear.

One day, I popped out the mesh of our front screen door from the force of my body. My father had to replace it.

* * *

These memories of my father flood over me that afternoon as I watch Orlando Bloom on the screen. I force myself to concentrate on time with my family, but I can’t stop missing my father. My throat begins to ache and I only see him, with his eyes closed, a palm of one hand softly on his stomach, the other held up in the air, swaying his shoulders side to side as “Adios Muchachos” plays on our stereo.

I have to excuse myself from my children and leave for the bathroom. I don't have the time to explain to them that I didn’t have my father long enough. I was a little girl who adored her father and he was here for much too short a time.

My father died two months into the start of my first grade; a shocking suicide. His death so abrupt that no one could get me to stop looking out of our front screen door for him. They gave up trying to pull me away, and I made the mesh pop out again. No one was there to replace it, and it remained split, with a bulge in the middle until my mother moved us to a new house.

My life has been filled with Father’s Days since then, and all of them, without him. I have never not thought of my father on this day and of how much I loved him. This Father's Day will begin like all the other ones have since, with my first words being, Feliz Dia de los padres, Papi. Te amo.

Happy Father’s Day, Papi, I love you.

 

* * *

The Music That Made Me

This week’s Rolling Stone has a cover story called “The Songs That Made Me” in which artists share six or eight songs that had influence in their lives. They’re not always what you’d expect, but when the answers given were honest ones versus choices made to impress, it's a beautiful peek into what someone is like.

When Nancy of midlife mixtape invited me to join in on a “The Music That Made Me” blog hop, it took all of two seconds for me to say yes.

I mean, music? Me and music? My thought bubbles are lyrics. All day long it's “We Got the Beat” as I run around getting everyone out in the morning, and then if I happen to be driving through anxiety-inducing heavy rain it's “Climb Every Mountain!” When I try on shorts for summer, I can't stop myself from humming “Impossible! For a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage!”

But when I sat down to whip out what I thought would be ten minutes of song titles, morphed into a tortured afternoon of hair-pulling crises: The question posed is “Songs that MADE me” not “Songs I LIKE.”

That pondering right there, is worth six pages of journal writing.

Songs that made me requires me to look a long ways back. Like through a tunnel of time that has me running past Merlin and George Washington and Attila the Hun.

Growing up with three older siblings means I was around music very early, the in kind. There was a hot beat always on the car radio or on the record player going in the basement. So, even if I'm not a fan of certain types of music, they may still  be a large part of my life, because of their presence.

 

This is what forces me to say that anything by the Beatles is part of The Music That Made Me. Especially from the Rubber Soul album.

1. “Michelle,” The Beatles

I was so young when I first heard this, but the power of feeling moved by music was something that made me ache. So beautiful, so classic, so easy to sing to. Self-soothing and cured whatever addled my poor psyche. This is an important feature, when you've always been a nervous lap dog.



2. "Ground Control to Major Tom,” David Bowie
First released in 1969, I didn't hear it until I began to, as my therapist said, “individuate myself from my family of origin.” So, it was the beginning of my teen years and while up late one night watching Don Kershner's Midnight Special, that I saw him. David Bowie. I fell in heavy crush love with all of him, and this song, with its storytelling fed me with the just what I love parts of drama, story, anguish, loss, of love, of BOWIE. Then, then, THEN, the rising of Bowie's voice after the lift off sound effects? Kill me now. I must have played that over 100 times every dang night in my room. David remains my forever crush.

3. "Paint it Black,” The Rolling Stones

I had grown up in a house of teen girls dancing to pop Top 100 Dick Clark on Saturday mornings, so in the 8^th grade, when my friend's older brother came home from college and would let us listen to his albums with him, my head spun from what I heard. This one, this one Oh Lord Here Come The Rolling Stones. Wild Horses, Mother's Little Helper, Under My Thumb, but Paint It Black spoke to me. Billy the college freshman probably had no idea that his music was the reason I stopped hating my straight hair and let it go frizzy and curly. Perfect for shaking back and forth to Mick and the gang.

I wanna see it painted, painted black

Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black

4. "Bang the Gong,” TRex

Another influence brought into my life by older friends. My high school boyfriend's older friend. The one I thought was so cool because he had his own room in the basement of his parents' house with 5 foot high speakers! Awesome, dude! How old are you? 21? And you have this cool room in your parents' house? Awesooooome! And all this cool music? Why haven't I ever heard it before? Anyway, this is one song that will always spell s-u-m-m-e-r to me. Young, free, dancing to TRex in Jeff's backyard while his parents were Up North. When I hear this today, it's sophomore year all over again.

5. "Radar Love,” Golden Earring

This embodies the making of mixtapes to woo. Stalkerish, not at all. I was dating someone else, but there was this one guy.... yes there was. And I would melt with the mixtapes he would send me. Radar Love was on one. Cue me falling into a puddle in my room with my cassette player next to my ear. But I couldn't break up with my steady boyfriend for a guy who knew the art of mixtapes? Could I? Oh - I was a fool, wasn't I? The power of music, to sway love.

6. "The Zoo,” The Scorpions

I had never heard of this German band until at a college party, when this song came on through speakers leaning out of a 2nd story flat. I also had never liked heavy metal, until this song came on. And then I didn't care if jazz was all the rage with everyone at college. From that night on, it was The Scorpions I wanted to dive into. I went against the tide, and I believe I was the first girl in college to finally stop pretending she liked jazz because the boys liked it. Maybe we were all pretending I don't know. But The Scorpions came into my life and so did the zebra cut up Tshirts, high heels, and poodle dog hair. I was in it. So if it was a house party singalong to Al Di Meloa or Al Jarreau or any other jazz Al, I was out of there. This puts the heavy, in heavy metal.

7. “Private Idaho,” B-52s

Learning at the hand of Cindy Wilson, Kate Pierson, the power of a sure move. There was a string of spring break vacations where with my trio of friends we would hit the dance club contests and request anything by the B52s. Sure, we made it look like we just decided to dance to the song that night but we had had hours of Saturday night house parties filled with dance move perfecting. With free all night drinks for best on the floor, stakes were high to bring out the moves. But no worries, Captain and cokes were on us every time, because we knew just when to take it to the floor with the B52s.

8. “Lose Yourself,” Eminem

As a poetry lover, this one drops the bombs. If you love a story, here you go. If you love the magic of being able to feel what someone of a different sex, decades younger than you, worlds apart, is talking about, this is the one. How does he do it? In 4 minutes, you know him- you feel the battle cry and you walk around like you've got Wonder Woman's cape on. How? That's Eminem. Yeah, I love him.

9. “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” Robbie Robertson

Ah, how this works: poetry and a sultry beat. The combination here started a summer that I remember as saying screw what everyone else is doing. I am not them. This song kept me company. I was the one floating down the crazy river, no destination, but I knew I'd get somewhere, someday. This is one of the sexiest, most intriguing pieces of music you'll ever hear. This is one of the best songs you'll ever hear. And that man's voice? Makes it 100 degrees out in March, "too hot to sleep." Oh, I hear you, Robbie. No way I can ever keep my hands from swirling up over my head when I pull this one out.

10. “In Your Eyes,” Peter Gabriel

My husband is not a romantic, overtly expressive person. What he is is stable, dependable, humble, and sincere. But words from him are few. So when he played this song for me on one of our first weekends together, it nearly broke my heart with how much of him he wanted me to see. It still makes me teary eyed, how difficult it is to tell someone we care for them. I treasure this song. It says everything, especially when on a string of days of living a daily life.

11. "The Flame,” Cheap Trick

I began with ballads, and I'm circling back to them. Music will always center me and calm me, and this is the boss ballad of them all. The end of the 80s were a particularly introspective time for me. Love had been had, and lost, and I felt the pressure to adult. The summer of 1988 was when I had to make a decision about someone I had been seeing for over five years. I still dream about him. Life, preservation, survival, happiness, at times means we have to do what is the best for us, even when we don't want to. Is it torture to listen to it now as I write this? Only if deep memories kill you.

*BONUS: “Feel so Different,” Sinead O'Connor

Because of course, those moments when we get tired of being who we are and say 'time to grow up.' A lot of that involves forgiveness. That's where Sinead O'Connor talked me through. With her, I gave up the anger of the done me wrongs. And, yes, I feel so different. Know what? Move this one up to the top.

Was this fun to do? In a bittersweet way.

Was it more like stirring up old ghosts? Absolutely.
It was sweet, in a twingey prickly pain sort of way, to remember who I've been.

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For more “The Music That Made Me” be sure to hop over to:

Smacksy

Arnebya
The Flying Chalupa
Elizabeth McGuire
Elleroy Was Here
Midlife Mixtape
Up Popped a Fox
When Did I Get Like This?
I Miss You When I Blink
My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog
Butterfly Confessions