I’m okay, you’re okay. Or you will be.

The Bad Week has passed. The one that marked a decade since Dad died. I can feel it slipping off my bones like a too heavy coat.

My pal Judy’s father died a few weeks ago. Her grief is still fresh and raw and cruel. Our fathers were nearly a quarter century apart in age– and Judy’s girls are about the same age I was but its all the same pain and ache.

Seeing Judy struggle for composure is hard. And worse is knowing nothing I say now will tell her that it won’t be so sharp over time or, on the other hand, that it won’t still completely suck every single day.

Blah.

Say, that’s a catchy tune!

Last week I hauled the family off to a Museum conference in Ohio– giving me not only the intellectual charge of a good conference and a few days with far-flung pals– but also a mini-holiday with the boys (minus one very miffed little black pup).

I’ve said it before but it warrants a reminder that my pals are amazingly talented. Whip smart funny– to be sure– but also, as it turns out, very musical. Armed with a bevy of 18th, 19th, and 20th century instruments they can entertain a crowd for the better half of a day.

And here’s where the heavens align a bit. My new obsession is with the autoharp. It’s mostly Reese Witherspoon’s fault. Her June Carter Cash and my Secret Movie Boyfriend, Joaquin, poked my curiosity. A Mighty Wind blew it over the edge. As the hours ticked down to 2006 this year some of the gang had assembled for a weekend that included, among copious amounts of food and drink, a drunken jam session. My pal Chris lent me his autoharp so I could strum along. This act was benevolent in many ways– the only stringed instrument I’ve ever played for any length of time was the violin in the 5th grade Strings Class. I was beyond horrible at it. I didn’t like the way it made my fingers so sore. Mrs H—, may she be given a quiet, lovely corner in heaven, was very patient but not a miracle worker. Maybe she had Annie Sullivan visions of my bow finally gliding across the well tuned strings while I played the musical version of “WaWA!!!” or maybe Title IX kept her from kicking me out. That summer I gave up my dream to be the Fiddler on the Roof and took on the tuba. (Yes, I realize in the movie version of my life that the pathos will be replaced by a laugh track.) I also don’t know any chords. My parents had two daughters– one who took to any muscial instrument, particuarly the piano, like YoYo Ma to a symphony, and me. While my sister’s piano lessons were punctuated with praise and fast paced strides in excellence… mine were punctuated with the incessant ticking of a metronome and the clock that seemed to run backwards. I could play by ear and I have a really good memory for music and lyrics. This would be great if I had talent and drive. Unfortunately I skated through the first few years of lessons on tricking my sister into playing my book for me so I’d know how it should sound then picking my way through the lessons with a succession of bored teachers who didn’t seem to catch that I wasn’t really reading the notes as much as I was remembering them.

Turns out that with an autoharp you don’t have to learn where to put your fingers to make the chords work. The keys are neatly labeled. So, when my pals were still sober enough to call out the chords I could keep up, playing as softly as I could and trying very hard not to let the picks go flipping off the tips of my fingers across the room. It was fun. I adopted my best June Carter Cash accent and had a ball.

Later this winter, while I sewed with the girls, Robby and Jack joined the boys for another jam session. Jack, who loves music, came back to me in one piece so I didn’t think much of it at the time. Chris sent us home with a CD of the Smithsonium collection of old time music and a list of the chords so that I could practice when I get my own instrument. For the last few weeks Jack and I have played it in the car while we run errands. Of all the songs the one called “Rye Cove” is Jack’s favorite. His little feet start kicking when he hears the chorus as his hands wave around in the air, the only parts of him free to move in the confines of his car seat harness. It’s a catchy little song. Unfortunately it’s about a cyclone that takes out a school full of innocent little children– but we like it. There’s something familiar about it.

At the conference this week I finally figured out just what that familiarity was. Late one night the boys gathered up their instruments and entertained those still awake in the hospitality room. Robby, ever sympathetic to my hunger for grown ups, put baby down for the night and told me to go ahead and join them. So I sat in while they played through several sets of Irish ballads and drinking songs. Chris lent me his autoharp again so I strummed in when I could and when I couldn’t, which was mostly, I held it up to my ear and played with the strings. One of them suggested we play Rye Cove. I perked up– Yay! it’s the song Jack and I like best in the car! But then another countered something about playing “The Dog Song”– a horrible, horrible deviant song about molesting the family pet. The verses go on and on until nearly the entire animal kingdom had been violated in some way or another. It fills the boys with glee when they sing it and, despite ourselves, cracks the rest of us up. They launched into that instead– but, click-click-click WAIT! Turns out Rye Cove and The Dog Song are one and the same. The tune at least.

All this time in the car with Jack I’d harbored tiny worries that the cyclone might not be age appropriate when in fact the kid has been dancing along to the song he remembers his ersatz Uncles singing.

Ericka Friend says the slow dawning of realization on my face was priceless. At least when Child Protective Services calls the hearing I’ll have a few people in my corner to testify I wasn’t aware of the connection?

I was concentrating too hard on the stupid chords. Every Good Boy indeed.

My baby’s turning 18… months

Tomorrow is a big day around here. Our monkey turns one-and-a-half-years old. How I’m not sure because it still feels a little new to have him around even while I can’t remember much before he came to be. My little enigma.

He has “well baby” check up in the morning– the first without any shots– where we’ll hold our breaths till the good doctor pronounces him fit and hale. He and I have a date, after we leave work where “we” have a meeting, to go pick out another Sandra Boynton book to mark the day. If the weather holds we’ll take the pup for a walk in the sunshine. We’ll celebrate with grilled cheesey sandwiches and a fun dessert and toast our boy at dinner… And then he’ll get tucked into his little nest while his Dad and I thank our God for him in ours.

Birthdays still aren’t any big deal to Jack. He’ll like the balloon that we’ll get at the store that sells the books… and he’ll like the attention of his little cousins and AunT at our table tomorrow night— but for him the day won’t be that far off from any other.

For us it’s huge. It seemed impossible that Jack would ever be so old as he is– 18 month clothing seemed so impossibly big (and, to be fair, it still is on our small little man) and the promise of this month’s “Language Explosion” still seems like a pipe dream… There’s a lot we’re looking forward to– tossing a ball in the backyard and riding a bike and camping. But part of me wishes I could freeze him as he is now for just a bit. This little fellow of few words but so many expressions. His boundless glee at climbing the back of the couch to the blanket chest and the utter joy he finds in getting pup a treat from the jar. His cro-magnon walk and grunts and the bopping of his body when he likes the music. The sweet yang of his kisses to the ying of his frustrated toy throwing.

Happy Half-Birthday Baby.

The highs and lows and in betweens

I really like the movie Parenthood. I liked it the first time I saw it– in the theaters– and each time it’s played on television. I love the scene where Steve Martin playing an uptight father finally gets the point of the tiny grandmother’s speech about life being a roller coaster. All hell is breaking loose at his kids’ school play and while the other parents are laughing he’s getting more and more close to losing it– then, over the noise of the crowd is the click clicking of a roller coaster climbing the hill, the pause as it crests, then the swoosh! as it plumments… and he gets it and starts laughing, too.

The last 10 days have been like that with Jack. Last week he was sick with what our good doctor said was “a raging ear infection” from a bad cold he and I shared. Flushed and warm he’d oscillate between screeching and whimpering to laughing and giggling. It left me worn out. Everything was a battle– getting the pink amoxicillan into him, getting him to eat, getting him cleaned up after a bad poo… it was all punctuated by his utter misery and my exasperation at not being able to alleviate it much.

Over the weekend the tide turned. The antibiotic finally kicked in and our Jack was back with a vengance. As if to make up for lost time he spent part of his day running from one end of the room to the other, spinning in circles, chasing the dog, climbing the furniture…. His Daddy and I, spent from a series of interrupted sleep and screeching wakeup calls, sat on the couch and welcomed back the pandemonium of a typical Jack day.

Today he’s been testing all afternoon. He had to go in to work with me and stay relatively quiet and good so on some level he probably felt justified in seeing just how far to the other extreme he could go before I ran stark raving mad into the oncoming traffic of our Catholic “It’s Lent! We need to go to daily mass!” neighborhood.

It’s all in the timing– just when you would normally be at the end of your rope… Because yesterday I had a long talk with a friend whose baby was born still and never went home to climb furniture or refuse a vegetable.

Roller coasters are all good. It’s the spinny things I don’t like. Keep your Magic Kingdom tea cups– I’ll stick with the Blue Streak.

Get off the phone– I’m expecting a call!

Around Christmas time Virgin Atlantic Airways had a silly promotion where you logged into their website and answered a series of questions and left a phone number where you could be reached, blahblahblah, resulting in a phone call from Richard Branson.

I know it was a canned call. I get that my responses were pieced together into a little conversational greeting and that it wasn’t a live Richard Branson on the other end of the phone… but still, it made me smile.

The pathetic part is that, three months later, with Jack screechy from a head cold that’s settled in his ear and chest, I’m still hoping the real Richard will call and say, “Hello m’lady– just thot eye’d tell you that eye’m flyin’ you and the fam’ly to London first class for a few days of shoppin’ and seyetseein’ and dining on me. Pack your bags, luv!”

Even with caller-ID I’m still hopeful.

Like I said. Pathetic.

Glory Glory Hallelujah!

Many, many moons ago, when I was in college a debate stirred.

Mind you, I went to a very small, conservative Christian college. Debates didn’t happen. Well. Not officially. Because to debate might open you up to the possiblities of the Other Side. It was easier, for most of my co-ed colleagues, to just be Right. Sometimes I picked arguments just to see what would happen. In my freshman year I made the fatal error of assuming that one could debate a topic from either side. Turns out, in that bubble, you couldn’t ever play the devil’s advocate. For a semester an entire class shifted their seats away from me on a daily basis because I had tried, in a matter of debating, to defend a side of a dictator. It didn’t matter that I personally did not agree with the dictator in question– it only mattered that I was open to seeing things from his point of view. I learned my lesson and stayed as quiet as possible from then on. Landing into trouble, in this new manner of keeping, only two or three times a week instead of daily.

Anyhoo. I bring this up because, around that time there was a quasi-debate going about the music in churches. In those days a lot of evangelical churches were switching over to “contemporary” formats and tossing out the hymnals full of the old standards. Apparently, the consensus among my peers at that time was that this was a good thing. They prattled off the arguments about churches having to be relevant and Now!-ish. That no young person could really relate to the old lyrics and tunes of the old hymns.

At the time I thought they were all full of… well. I wasn’t supposed to use that word.

I like old hymns. I like the old gospel songs. For me there was a mystical magic in the words. There still is. I remember arguing once with a dear one about the Words in Hymns That Nobody Really Understands. Those were the words I liked best. My Mom helped me with a few of them. I distinctly remember when the word “diadem” as in “Bring forth the royal dia-dem…” caught my 7 or 8 year old ear. I knew what the cherubin were but the seraphim at Christmas time involved a trip to the dictionary in the back of my Dad’s study Bible. There are still hymns that make me smile at the sound of their opening bars because I know they are chocked full of interesting phrases.

Okay, it’s true. There are “contemporary” songs that have been written to ease the learning curve. And it’s true that noone phrases things exactly as they do in the hymnals… I haven’t ever “survey”-ed anything, or had my soul “attendeth,” or brought up the sum of my trangressions in any recent conversations.

But the old stuff works for me.

Yesterday, in the newspaper, there was an article about the reemergence of the old music in churches today. That even the big, scary, BigBox, mall churches that were built to the technobeats of contemporary worship are revisiting the “classics” because the young people have sought them out.

HAH! (It takes me years sometimes to win a debate. Let me savor this moment. Albeit a lonely, lonely moment.)

Besides. When my best pal’s Grandmother died years ago… when we were both long old enough to know better, we burst into giggles at the funeral because, I pointed out, the hymnist wasn’t really “alone” In the Garden– I was there, too. Remember? “As I tarry there?” He just got the spelling wrong.

I have an open mind. I’ll let it slide.