I Will Not Pretend

This is what happens when your daughters learn and love music. God bless the guitar and the pen.

Martha is the daughter of my favorite songwriter, Loudon Wainwright. I worked with her mom Kate and her aunt Anna. It taught me what chick rock really is.

Chicks Must Rock

It distresses me that you can no longer see the Joan Armatrading video. -- and I am not sure why that is. I urge you instead to find it for yourself on YouTube.

It’s harder than I thought to find the chick tunes that I love…

Good example right here: Carole King wrote this famous song. See her there, in the background? Hear the way they made fun of her hair, of her? She WROTE this song…

If you have a daughter, get her a guitar or drums this Christmas.

PS: JT is hot.

Soccer Update

She didn’t make a travel team.

I am pretty sure that she didn’t even come close.

When the news came, her little sister was taking the trash out, and so she and I had a moment alone. (Her younger brother is still clueless.) I told her the truth as she was reading the letter; I wanted to give her some heads up. She read it herself – it was a nice, vague kind of way of saying “No.”

Her sister walked in the door, post chore, and that girl of mine said, “I gotta letter about travel soccer.”

Her little sister, her arch enemy, slammed her hands to her ears, and looked right at me:

“I don’t want to hear that she didn’t make it.”

She didn’t, I said.

The little sister shuddered: I saw her whole body shake.

But my oldest? The one who didn't make it? She walked toward her to make it better, to soothe her, her little sister.

I said “better luck next year” because that seemed the only thing to say, and then they giggled and ran off together.

I guess we're over it.

How Not To Raise A Pacifist

That Man came home after three weeks in posh hotels with really hip people. He was home less than 24 hours before he left again, but this time, he left with us -- for a long weekend away to his inlaws he had no part in planning. It was the ultimate kid and family culture shock.

When the weekend ended and we returned to the picket fence again (after 11, yes eleven, combined hours in the car), he was accosted by my middle daughter's begging to find a "cool" game on the internet. He was tired, worn out, but he relented. (She's 6; he isn't.) I was happy that he was happy to do it: after all these days and endless hours, he still was willing to be involved. I dug into the piles of mail, boiled the water for more mac & cheese, and felt satisfied and good.

Not fifteen minutes passed when my gut got the better of me.

That Man: I'm not so sure you should play this game.

He shields the screen; he giggles nervously.

R: Why, Daddy? It's good you found this game! It's fast and it has BLOOD

Funky Chick Goodness

I am heading out at 1pm tomorrow with ALL my family to Jersey to visit my sister. Very happy to get a change of scenery and actually, strangely, even looking forward to the 4 plus hour car ride with us five. Will download some This American Life’s and when the kids get in the car zone, either asleep or day-dreaming, me and That Man will listen to our hearts content, me with a giant ice coffee and everyone all strapped in and in one place and zooming down the road.

Before I go, it occurred to me that there have been too many male voices in my music showcases, so here's Joan, reminding us to show some emotion. And shake that thang at the same time.

Oh God

That Man saw something on TV lately about how when the earth heats up enough as it’s expected to do, a cloud of pollution (for lack of a better word) will encircle the globe causing natural condensation that will then cool the earth down. It’ll save the planet, allowing humanity to ride on. He was in a hotel in New York, lonely I like to think, and he told me he thought, “If this is true, there must be a God.”

That same day, I heard a story from my friend who works in the NICU. (Sometimes she unloads her tales to me, partly because she knows I crave the drama, and partly because her husband does not.)

Story goes: mother of a three week old baby wakes to find the baby in her bed, where she had nursed him all night, unresponsive. Infant rushed to the hospital and within little time, all the experts agree -- the baby is virtually dead, brain-dead, a vegetable. The mother believes she inadvertently smothered him, which may be the case, but the doctors mark it as SIDS. This woman suffered several miscarriages prior to this pregnancy, which was the result of IVF. This was her miracle, her healthy baby, her dream come true.

Justice? God? All I could think was if there is a God, what kind of crazy, unbearable lesson is trying to be taught here? No kind and loving God would allow this to happen. This is mean. Unfair.

My friend, the nurse, a believer, who said this was one of the worst things she has dealt with in her career, didn’t cry when she told me. I did. (She cries all the time about other stories I tell; she is never afraid to cry). I asked her, why? Why aren’t you crying? She said, I could help that woman that day for that minute in some miniscule way that makes me feel better; you can’t and that makes you feel worse.

If there is a God, she works in mysterious ways. And I am either too stupid or too smart to get it.

And Now, Politics

My sister lives in New Jersey. (I no longer hold that against her.) Her youngest child is the same age, give or take a week, as my oldest; she has a kid in high school and one in between. Despite our age difference, the physical space between us, and the fact that we only have one child to link our day-to-day experiences, we remain very close. As in, on the phone 4 or 5 times a week close. I love my sisters, both of them, but me and she do the grunt work of living together. We check-in.

She checked-in today. It’s election day, after all, and in our family, casting a vote starts as a right of passage and become as natural – and important – as breathing. In my sister’s district, there were a few piddly seats to be filled, all mostly unchallenged, but there were also a handful of important ballot questions. (Oh, how we love ballot questions!)

She admitted to having researched only two of them beforehand: an open-space initiative (she’s for it) and a stem cell research bill (she’s for that too). The open-space question would preserve undeveloped landscapes in her town. The stem cell bill would allow New Jersey to commit tax payer dollars (and lots of them) to the controversial research (bias coming) that could save countless lives.

She was psyched to fill in those affirmative circles, and since she had time, she figured she would read and digest the other questions and make her decision on the spot.

The third question read (in part) as follows:

"Approval of this amendment concerning the denial of the right to vote would delete the phrase 'idiot or insane person' and replace that phrase with 'person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting' in describing those persons who shall be denied the right to vote."

My sister told me she read it twice, laughing out loud both times behind the curtain. She is normally the kind of bleeding heart liberal my husband has come to distrust. She said, “I usually vote yes down the line.”

But in this instance, the “idiot” instance, my sister voted no. She voted for the word idiot to stay.

She said, “We’re talking about a cure for diabetes or cancer or MS and quibbling about language at the same time? What the fuck? Yeah, keep “idiot”, keep it.”

I reminded her that if I lived in New Jersey, I could technically sue the state to prove that my own husband has “idiotic” political ideas that are sometimes “insane” and that he shouldn’t be allowed to express them with a vote.

She thought for a minute, and said “Cure for cancer, or your idiot husband? No brainer.”

I love my family.