A little political humor. My daughter is 10. Those of you who have or had 10-year old daughters, I accept your pity.
We were all gathered in the kitchen, getting ready to eat dinner. My daughter was shrieking like a professional wailer at a funeral. We have become quite accustomed to these outbursts.
“What’s she crying about now?” I asked.
“Obamacare,” my son responded. “She has all these mixed emotions about Mitt Romney and Obamacare.”
Occasionally, I rebel against the mashed potato and un-sauced meat diet that keeps my family fed. Then, I go to the hot food and salad bars at Whole Foods and pile a mish-mash of green things into a box to eat while the heathens make their daily sacrifice to the Gods of Meat.
Recently, my son looked inquiringly at my plate. “Whatcha got there?” he asked. Because hope truly does spring eternal, I jumped at the chance to introduce him to foods without hooves.
“Well,” I said, “This is cole slaw, that’s tofu and this is broccoli.”
He didn’t turn away, so I continued on a tour of my dinner plate.
“This is quinoa salad and that, with the yogurt, is falafel.”
He looked at me and said, “Now you’re just making up words.”
This weekend, I took my little drummer boy to heaven. Actually, what we did was drive down to Chicago, get lost for an hour, and finally arrive at what is probably the biggest drum store in America: Vic’s Drum Shop.
I do not see my son smile very often. The instant he walked past the front door, he got one of those little “I have been waiting for this my entire life but I can’t make it obvious because I’m with my mom” smiles.
Vic’s has room after room of drum stuff. There are two rooms for cymbals. There is a room bigger than my entire first floor full of fully set up drum kits. There is a room as big as my living room full of world percussion instruments. There is a room dedicated to snares. There is a room full of drum heads. There is a room full of drum sticks. There is a room full of drum stands. Just the stands! All of the rooms are sound-proofed. Drum heaven, indeed.
But, best of all, there is Vic. Vic Salazar is the Willy Wonka of drums. A slight but somehow still cuddly man, endowed with the most amazing hair, Vic himself waited on my son and I. By waited on, I mean he spent at least two hours with us. Us! And we were there to buy a cymbal. One cymbal.
Vic pointed out cymbal after cymbal, sharing with my son the variety of sounds available, the reasons the specific sounds were possible from each cymbal, the differences in quality and construction. My son nodded, crashing and riding each of the crashes and rides. I smiled and thought, “I have no idea what the hell they are talking about.” At one point, my son looked at me and said, “You have no idea what we’re talking about, do you?” It was one of the few times he looked at me at all, but who could blame him surrounded by all that shiny brass.
Why, you may ask, did we travel all the way into Chicago just to buy one cymbal? I wondered the same, frankly, as I thought about the nice little music store near our house. We love the guys at our local music store; they love us. But they have three crashes (cymbals, that is; not automobiles through the front glass–though that is possible). The least expensive crash they carry is $250.
Vic has an entire wall of crashes and rides. And Vic has prices! Oh, my god! Vic has prices! Having done our online homework, I had determined we would need to spend enough to buy me a really nice pair of leather boots. When Vic started quoting prices, the knot in my gut eased. I hugged Vic. He hugged back. He’s just that kind of guy.
I became a music mom happily, glad to escape the god-awful getting up at 5 a.m. to drive to hockey, soccer and swim meets all over the greater Chicagoland area. I patted myself on the back over not needing to spend fortunes on hockey equipment, Speedos and whatever the hell soccer players wear.
When my son started playing drums, we got a used kit. It’s a fine kit; we paid about $800 for the whole thing. Drum kits are made with nice sturdy metal things; replace a head now and then and we’re golden, I thought.
Then, I found out that cymbals can shred. They can literally shred, as in pieces. Entire chunks of brass peel off like a bad toupee. And drum sticks! They shred, too! And they break! Even though sticks are made of the same stuff as baseball bats, drummers go through sticks faster than my daughter can go from a whine to a kiss.
At one point during our adventure in drum land, I watched my son and Vic happily banging away on cymbal after cymbal. My son is right; I had no idea what they were doing or why. But he was in heaven and it brought tears to my eyes.
I have sucked up the idea of ever having really nice leather boots. I am a drummer’s mother. Until he finds a job, I’ll be making up the difference between what his allowance covers and the cost of a decent cymbal and a brick of sticks.
Vic’s Drum Shop is tucked away in a warehouse-y kind of place off of Ogden north of Lake Street. The address is 345 N. Loomis. Go if you can, but ’til then go to Vic’s Facebook page and give him a “like.”
from the Food Heathen Files
Every school day morning, my daughter eats breakfast while I put together her lunch. Usually, I make her breakfast, too, but one morning, she decided to have a Gopicnic® “ready-to-eat meal.” Kind of like a Lunchable® but made with food, the meal included a turkey snack stick, fruit leather, chips and some other snacky things.
One of the snack items was a package of “seed and fruit mix.” My daughter read the ingredients, “Mountain Mambo,” she said. “sunflower kernels, pumpkin seeds, raisins, apples, chocolate chips and cranberries. Ewwwwww!”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’ll put it in my oatmeal.”
“Well, you can have it,” she said, tossing me the package.
Later, she asked where the package of seeds and fruit was.
“I ate it in my oatmeal,” I said.
She walked past me, eyebrows up, mouth screwed in disgust and said, under her breath, “Yeah. You’re gonna be throwing up soon.”
My daughter claims I am a fashion criminal, but that didn’t stop her from watching the glittery dress parade Emmy Awards with me last night. While I folded laundry, she did her best Joan Rivers impersonation, declaring Clare Danes’ dress looked like a trash bag and Julianne Moore’s was too tight. Sophia Vergara got a thumbs up, but Ginnifer Goodwin and Amanda Plumber didn’t pass my daughter’s muster.
Between spangles, we put up with Jimmy Kimmel’s witless banter, until he dropped an A-bomb.
In one of those stupid so-funny segments the writers insert to keep the broadcast entertaining, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who plays Lily in Modern Family, was featured pranking the rest of the cast in “Lily is a Monster.” Never mind that the skit is supposed to be about Aubrey’s misbehavior. Take a look:
Following the bit, which I found forced and humorless, Kimmel said, “That would make a good public service announcement for adoption.”
My daughter recoiled. There are lots of things you want to see your kid do, like ride a bike for the first time, wear a gown and mortarboard for kindergarten graduation, lose a first tooth. But recoiling? My breath caught, then she responded:
“Poop you, Fat Guy!”
Poop you, indeed, Kimmel and Poop you, writers for the predictable segment and ugly, scripted comment. Most of all, Poop you, ABC, for hiring the writers and Kimmel both.
My children like to bond with me by making me watch a god-awful mutually-enjoyable television show with them. With my daughter, it’s frequently Animal Planet because she doesn’t like cooking shows or shows where people speak intelligent dialogue. I don’t like shows where the main character is a pretty but quirky and misunderstood white girl who’s best friend is a fat black girl with a ghetto accent even though her parents are plastic surgeons and live in a mansion.
My daughter has been taking advantage of the fact that her brother would rather IM with his friends than interact with his family. Recently, though, he noticed that his sister has had two consecutive weeks of mother-daughter bonding time. He walked in on us about halfway through “The Great Barrier Reef” and demanded to know when it was his turn. I invited him to join us, noting “It’s a really beatiful show.” He declined just as a shark devoured a sea turtle, crushing it’s shell like it was a potato chip. “Real beautiful,” he said, leaving the room.
Later in the week, Chris Hayes appeared as a panelist on Real Time with Bill Maher. I proudly admit to having a massive nerd-girl crush on Chris Hayes. I’m into that boyish good looks and quick intellect thing. Now, I’m also into Joe Manganiello and am pretty sure Chris Hayes shirtless would cancel out his nerdly hotness.
I invited my son to watch Real Time with me. For a few minutes we watched the debate in silence. Chris was acquitting himself nicely, defending his views with a devastating combination of wit, mastery of the facts and intelligence.
Rapt, my son said, “Did he go to Harvard? Or did he invent Harvard?”
My son has a new girlfriend.
The young lady is lovely, though my son initially described her as a Smurf. She’s tiny, except in certain places where tiny is less than desirable, and she has blue hair. Well, not completely blue, but the Farrah Faucet-y bits around her face are definitely blue.
But before he described his lady love’s appearance, our son told us, “She’s an atheist.” I didn’t realize how important his religious stance was to him, though, until he started preparing us to meet Girl Friend for the first time. He repeated the “she’s an atheist” bit and then said, “I told her you guys are atheists, too, and she thinks that awesome.”
“You told her what?” I asked.
“That you guys are atheists.”
“But we’re not,” I said.
“Dad’s an atheist and you’re a Buddhist. That’s the same as being an atheist. You told me yourself, ‘Buddha’s not a god’.”
Now, I can tell the kid to start the oven for the pizza, or move the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, or bring our entire collection of drinking glasses down from his room and he forgets within minutes. I have no idea how he hung onto “Buddha isn’t a god” but I was definitely wishing he hadn’t. Some days you want to help your kids with the big ideas and some days you don’t.
I took a deep breath.
“Ok, you’re right. Buddha isn’t a god, but that doesn’t mean that I’m an atheist.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“You mean white guy on a cloud god? No.”
“Then you’re an atheist.”
I sighed.
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose you’re right.” He smiled the smile of those who believe they’ve won the argument and the subject is closed, so he didn’t really hear, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in a spiritual life, that I don’t have a soul.”
But the subject isn’t closed. Not by a long shot. Since that conversation, I’ve mulled the idea of soul and spirituality on a daily basis. I now have a headache.
I’ve thought about soul on my runs, which has led me—consistently—to finish them singing, “R, E, S, P, E, C, T!” Not a bad way to end a run, but not the resolution I’d hoped for.
So, I asked other bloggers what they thought about soul. The G’nat at G’nat’s Eye View is an existentialist. His response made me realize that there are some seriously deep people in my virtual world. G’nat said:
I don’t think there is a difference between the soul and the self. Purpose? Purpose is our creation. Life is a blank canvas, and the self (or soul) holds both the paint and the brushes. The self (soul) not only has the freedom, but also has the responsibility to paint its own purpose.
I took philosophy in college. I really liked it, back when I had a lot of time and a young brain. I’m not saying I’ve gotten slow, but I had to read G’nat’s very thoughtful response a few times before I really understood his view. I think there’s a reason I read mainly trashy fantasy novels these days.
But the G’nat doesn’t get at the spiritual component of soul that nags at me. I’m not the only mom prodded to address religious issues because of her kids. Dinnerversions, who happens to publish a pretty wonderful food blog, said:
My own feeling is that our ‘soul’ is the energy within us. Neurons firing, chemical messengers moving across a gradient, the electrical potential between the cells of a heartbeat, the positive or negative charge of an amino acid….All of that is energy and when we die, that energy leaves us. That’s about as deep as I get.
I think that’s pretty deep. And she seems to be on to something. Hello Sailor has a similar view:
I believe everything has a soul and a soul is a type of energy, or a life force. Logically my brain wants it to know that it is just neurons and chemical messages, but in my heart there is something mystical about it, because where did that energy come from in the first place and where does it go when we are finished?
Maybe the energy gets recycled? Nevercontrary believes in reincarnation. I’ve tried; I’m not sure I don’t. It certainly explains having an immediate and intense reaction to someone, as I’ve had on meeting several people in my life. Mad Queen Linda at The Magic Bus Stop, equates the soul with consciousness and I like that, seeing as how it leaves room for lower and higher levels of consciousness. My cat, for instance, is on the same level as, say, Adolf Hitler and is likely just as irredeemable.
A few bloggers thought I was over thinking, which is really nothing new. Racing thoughts of all sorts kind of go with the bipolar territory. (Am I doubly bipolar if my thoughts are racing while I run? Does that make me quadripolar? Are my thoughts racing right now?)
Courtney Hosny of oneweektocrazy considered her immortal soul and decided whatever is at the end is at the end and figured the point of soul-searching was moot. Societyred once had a discussion about whether or not a rock has a soul. My kind of guy! He gave me a lightbulb moment with his retort to someone asking if he cared where we spend eternity: “I told him I had too much to think about in the here and now. Isn’t this time part of eternity?”
This time is, indeed, part of eternity. Certainly, some things feel like they take an eternity, like pre-school Christmas holiday pageants.
In the end, I believe that there is something beyond our physical bodies that makes us wonder about things like, is there something beyond our physical bodies. Areyoufinishedyet offered an explanation for the “something beyond” that she promised would blow my mind. It did.
Our bodies are made up of about 50% hydrogen atoms. When the universe was born, ALL of the hydrogen and helium atoms were formed. And since matter can neither be created nor destroyed, that means the hydrogen half of you is 13.7 billion years old. I think that definitely speaks to the idea of soul, and the continuity of the soul. Maybe the soul is the collective experience of those hydrogen atoms. We are imprinting our own story on the atoms inside our body as we live and breathe, and that story will be taken with those atoms once our bodies are gone, transformed into something else.
I would like to thank everyone who so thoughtfully responded to my call for input on the idea of “soul.” They all certainly have it.
I live with food heathens. While I will eat, and enjoy, pretty much anything (except liver), they are happy to subsist on chips, cheese and bacon. These are three of my favorite food groups, but I occasionally like to eat as if my heart mattered to me. Unfortunately, many of the things that only I will eat come in a package designed for a family of vegans, or, as my son might say, “A family of losers.” Hence, the following scenario is all too common.
Me (clearing out the fridge, flinging half-eaten containers of healthful foods in the nearby trash): Agh! Why don’t they make these in smaller containers? I’m so sick of throwing away hummus!
My husband: Oh, Bah Hummus!
Me, after several seconds of glaring at him: Oh, my god. You didn’t just say that. Daughter, come shoot your daddy in the head.
Daughter (whining): But then I’d have to go to juvie!
Every Wednesday night, I go to the gym and I sit. Now, I’m not a slug, by any means, but I’m not there to get my weekly workout. I’m there for a different kind of exercise: watching my daughter fling her body around bars, jump in the air over a wooden beam and travel the length of a mat using her arms as if they were legs.
My daughter does gymnastics. My daughter thinks it’s fun, so I ignore the freaked out voice in my head that screams, “She’s going to break her neck” every time she jumps more than one inch on the beam.
I’m not alone, of course. There are all kinds of parents at the gym. There are parents who read while they wait, parents who work while they wait and parents who surf the web while they wait.
And then, there are those parents.
Like “I’m Having A Meeting Here, People!” Mom. Hogging prime real estate in front of the viewing window (parents are not allowed in the gym), she very loudly discusses with her clients how she is going to make right what she has clearly done wrong. I wish she would shut the hell up, but none of the other parents seem to be bothered.
I sort of feel sorry for Binoculars Dad. My daughter is in the recreational program, which is code for these kids are never going to the Olympics. Binoculars Dad has a daughter in “Team” and she’s a Level 10, the highest level you can go in competitive gymnastics. Apparently, Olympic contenders go to eleven.
Binoculars Dad needs binoculars because the team athletes work out on the far side of the gym, “far” as in far away from prying—and distracting—parental eyes. The recreational kids are right up front; no one cares if they get distracted.
I feel sorry for Binoculars Dad because, well, he needs binoculars to see his daughter practice. Team gymnastics costs a butt load of money; the compulsory leotard alone is $140. I feel his pain. Every month, I give a lot of money to Hix Brothers music for my son to have lessons in guitar and drums. This has been going on for years; I have heard my son play guitar three times. He insists he practices in his room, which shall be the subject of another post, but I’m thinking of bugging the place for proof.
My favorite parents, though, and I mean that in the “Oh, man, these people are un-freaking-believable” sense, are The Sports Announcers.
This couple follows their daughter’s progress around the gym, providing commentary on every aspect of her performance, the coaching, the other members of the practice group and what they’ll do with the intel they’ve gathered when they get home alone with their kid.
Let’s say their daughter, Stephanie, is practicing with her group on the floor exercise mats.
“Oh!” says Mom, “he’s having them do back handsprings,” referring to the move the coach is having the girls do. “Stephanie should be able to do that,” says Dad.
“Oh!” says Mom. “Cara did a nice one. Stephanie’s turn!”
“Ok, Stephanie,” says Dad. “Don’t lose focus.”
A minute passes.
“She didn’t do a back handspring,” says Dad. “I wonder why.” Like me, Stephanie’s mom clearly doesn’t care; she’s busy analyzing the team.
“Oh!” says Mom, because she starts every statement with “Oh!”, “there’s a new girl.”
“And a new boy,” says Dad. Both parents are clearly disturbed that Stephanie’s universe has been invaded.
“I wanna know her name,” says Mom. “I wanna know his name,” says Dad. I want you to shut up, I think, but by now I am drawn into the play by play of Stepanie’s practice session. I decide to move closer to the viewing window to watch my daughter. She sticks her landing and we flash each other a thumb up.
The Sports Announcers follow me. Stephanie’s group is now doing front handsprings or back walkovers or front-to-back walkover springs. I have no idea what the names of all these moves are but I’m sure the Sports Announcers will let me know.
Unfortunately, the Sports Announcers have become distracted by Stephanie’s hair, which seems to be coming loose repeatedly.
“Oh!” says Mom, “her hair is loose again. Look! Coach is telling her to put it up again.”
“Is her hair too thin for a Scrunchi?” asks Dad. This stops me in the middle of thinking Will you shut the hell up? Sports Announcer Dad has used the word “Scrunchi” appropriately. My husband probably thinks a Scrunchi is an Italian appetizer.
Mom ignores the Scrunchi comment; it’s Stephanie’s turn.
“Oh! She’s really focused. Oh! She did a back handspring.”
“It wasn’t very good,” says Dad. “Just like with bars. It took a while so we’ll work on this now. We just have to get her to not put her head on the mat. We’ll talk to her when she comes out.”
I decide I must see this Stephanie child, so pull my eyes away from my daughter’s group. I scan through the practice group next to hers, looking for a seriously focused athlete with scrawny hair. I find her.
“SHE’S FIVE!” my brain screams. It can’t be true, I think. I’ve made a mistake. That taller, ten-year-old must be Stephanie. But it’s not. Stephanie is an adorable five-year-old girl with a sweet smile, a chubby little tummy, really fine hair and parents from hell.
I look away just in time to see a girl do three perfect back handsprings in a row. Her coach runs up to her, grabs her under the arms and swings her around and around as they both laugh. And then, the session is over.
My daughter runs out of the gym and meets me in the viewing area. I see Stephanie greet her parents, bouncing up and down, but I don’t stay to hear what they say. I give my daughter a hug, ask if she had fun and kiss the top of her head. Next week, I think, I’ll bring my headphones.
featuring my son, 16 years old
My son is now at the age where he leaves for hours at a time to meet up with friends and do constructive things like drive from mall to mall visiting their favorite stores. I say visiting because, between them, they have almost enough money to get a fast food meal and put half a gallon of gas in the designated driver’s car.
I know a little bit more about the aspirations of some of my son’s cohorts than is comfortable for a woman known to worry about things like being sucked out of an airplane toilet. I know, for instance, that one of his group really, really wants to try LSD or just about any mind-altering substance.
Recently, Son came home from one of his mall inventorying ventures along with three other young men. I was coming down the stairs just as they opened the front door so nearly collided into Son. He was smiling; he looked happy. This is not a state I am accustomed to in him. Mr. I Want To Drop Acid and See God was with him.
I surveyed the situation and said the first thing that popped into my head.
“Are you high?” I said. He and his friends looked at me like I was insane. Now, the minute it came out of my mouth I knew it was probably not the best way to greet my son and three young men who tower over me, but there you are.
Later, reviewing the incident, I asked my son, “God, what on earth was I thinking!?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” he said. “I was like ‘Hi, Mom!’ and you were like ‘Hi, Drug Addict!’”
Snide Reply 