When Mama Calls

 

I was driving to Costco yesterday, my only outside errand for the day. It wouldn’t take long, I just needed 3 items, and it’s not far from home. I tried to pick an off-hour to avoid the warehouse crowds, but that never works. There’s no easy in-and-out at Costco.

Just as the arrow turned green and I made the left onto Laguna Canyon Road, Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” came on the radio. Immediately my tears began flowing.

My mom always liked that song. She’d quote it sometimes when she called me. And she always sang the last three notes of it as “cha-cha-cha!”
I cried all the way to Costco. Ugly face, gasping breath crying. Between gasps I said out loud “Hi Mom! I hear you!” like I’ve been doing whenever something unusual appears that reminds me of her, like when a flock of pelicans flew over my apartment the day after she died. Mom loved watching them fly; I’ve never seen pelicans in town in the 4 years I’ve lived here, nor any since that day.

The song ended the exact moment I pulled into my parking space…cha cha cha. Still crying, I couldn’t figure out why I was SO emotional. Yes, the song reminded me of her, but lots of things do and they don’t make me cry like this. The song wasn’t particularly meaningful to one specific time or place that I was remembering and missing, it was just a general thing she liked, one of a thousand I could name.
I could not with any certainty say that it was sadness I was feeling, nor depression, nor even the still-fresh loss of her. But it was a deep, guttural rising up from places I couldn’t identify. It consumed me.

A moment later the mindfog cleared and I had a revelation.

I realized what I’m feeling here and now in this moment is the depth of the love SHE had for ME as her child. It’s the love that other women have told me “you can’t possibly understand until you have a child of your own.” That feeling that I figured I would have to accept as truth because I would never experience it as a mother myself. But I WAS experiencing it. And I say again that it was not sadness nor a feeling of the loss of her; it was the feeling OF her that will always be within me. 

I always knew how much my mom loved me, she told me so all the time. But I couldn’t truly feel it to its full extent until she was gone forever. That’s an unfortunate truth yet one full of everlasting promise.

She used to tell me, “I love you always and forever. My baby you’ll be.” And she meant that from the bottom of her heart......cha cha cha.

Her Name is Jenny and She Dances to the Band

On the first day of 6th grade in 1982 I met a girl named Jennifer. A quiet redhead, she quickly earned the label of smartest kid in class. One weekend she invited me to spend the night at her house. Upon walking into her room for the first time my eyes were immediately drawn upward. Taped to the ceiling directly above her bed was a poster of five guys, all dressed in black and white, one wearing a fedora. It was the iconic picture of British pop band Duran Duran.

At the time I knew OF the group, but I didn't know anything about them. Jen quickly schooled me. She was already an expert. 30 years later, Jen is a little less quiet, happily married, and has a law degree, but is still one of the biggest Duran Duran fans around.

Part of a community of GenX women who travel the country following the band on tour, she recently attended her 33rd Duran Duran concert. They're like Deadheads but with better overnight accommodations.

No doubt their resources as professionals allow them better seats and pre-concert drinks, but they also have more life-work responsibilities to work around. In 2005 Jen (who lives in South Florida) learned on a Monday morning of a one-night-only show that Saturday...in Southern California. She told herself all day that she couldn't possibly swing that trip on less than a week's notice. But that night she IM'd a fellow Duranie to discuss options, and by Tuesday she had a ticket, a flight, and a rental car. "It was a special show in many ways—intimate venue, no distractions, just the five of them," recalled Jen.
Totally worth it.

This photo was taken by Nick Rhodes while the band played "Girls on Film" at a show in San Francisco. Jen is in the front row...somewhere.

Attending so many shows--and those pay-extra pre-show events--does have its benefits occasionally. One of the ladies in the group was at an Atlanta show and asked Nick Rhodes for a picture after the concert, adding that it was her birthday. A few months later he saw her after another show and acknowledged her as “Birthday Girl.” He said that he didn’t remember exactly when or where it was because that all starts to run together, but he remembered her.

...with John Taylor at a book signing in New York

To anyone who's ever obsessed over a celebrity, this is huge. And I say "obsessed" in the nicest way possible.

While these ladies' admiration surely began with pre-teen hormone rages, they truly are music aficionados. No two live shows are ever the same, and the anticipation of hearing a rarely-played song is one of the things that keeps them following. Jen always tries to get tickets as close to the front as possible. "It may sound silly," she says, "but there is something about getting a smile or a wink from one of the guys who used to be totally untouchable idols in posters on the wall."

In fact, when the group went to a pre-show meet-and-greet with the band, they walked in and John Taylor said, “I know you guys. You go to a lot of shows.” EEEEEEEE!!!

Jen continues, "And I guess a part of it is that in a way, it does take me back to that time. For a few hours, all of the adult responsibilities go on the back burner. When I first started trying to explain this to people, I said that I had found my inner 14-year-old, only she has discretionary income and no curfew."

The relationships between these women go deeper than just a love of the boys in the band. What started out as online chats with other groupies has turned into a group that gets together outside of concerts for things like baby showers and 40th birthday weekends. "In some ways, the band is almost secondary now," said Jen. Almost.

I Won't Go Gentle Into That New Millennium

Two and a half years ago I wrote about my disdain for a cute Asian girl who showed up on TV claiming "I'm a PC and I'm 4 and a half," while she showed off her deft technology skills. This little tyke put me to shame. At the time I was "37 and a Walkman."

I just--finally--got my first iPod this Christmas, exactly 24 years to the day after I got my first (and only) Sony Walkman cassette player. Last night I spent two hours trying to set it up. Download this program, register this gadget, create this account, autosign this legal agreement, oops you're due for updates (really, Apple? three sets of updates in one evening??). And every step contained several subsequent pop-up boxes with various options that required checking and unchecking tiny little boxes.

I don't like this kind of commitment, mainly because I will NEVER find my way back to any particular set of checkboxes. Basically, the choices I made last night will stand forEVER.

It's not that I don't embrace technology, I simply don't want all these blessed questions. My Walkman had the following instructions (in 8 languages): Pop in a cassette and push "play."

DONE.

That is why I kept it for 18 years.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod. I'm so glad to finally be caught up to 2001. I'm just a little awkward with it. I found myself listening to it while walking around the house, holding the thing in my hand. It's what, an inch and half squared and weighs all of one ounce? I could clip it to my earlobe and barely notice it, yet I felt like I had to CARRY it because that's what I know. Even more embarassing is that I *almost* needed to put my glasses on just to read the miniscule touch screen on my nano. I didn't have to READ my Walkman, it had four buttons.


So while I try to reconcile the fact that my entire iPod nano is smaller than the mere belt clip on my old Walkman, I'm reveling in the ease and speed at which I can now search for, find, purchase, download, and listen to songs I haven't heard in years, without having to buy nine other unwanted songs on an album. And without having to sit there while I re-record them onto a tape, hoping the tape doesn't run out in the middle of a song.

Ohh, 2001, you've got your hooks in me.

Buffetting the Storm

Fifteen years ago I learned to embrace the power of positive thinking.

I wasn’t attending a Tony Robbins seminar, nor was I reading a Norman Vincent Peale book. Rather, I was stuck in a car on a Pennsylvania highway, alone in a traffic jam.

It was early January 1996, the final semester of my senior year of college. It was 18 degrees outside and I was driving back to campus after a seven-week internship in sunny Florida. A major storm had just blown through the entire Northeast, and I knew there was 23 inches of snow on the ground waiting to greet me at my apartment.

I was still an hour and a half away when it began to snow again just as the sun started to set. Some unseen event ahead of me halted traffic to a snail’s pace, and we reached a top speed of 10 miles per hour for the short spurts when we were actually moving.

In the prior seven weeks my blood had quickly thinned out to a deeply southern consistency, so the cold was hitting me hard. On top of that I was tired from hours of traveling and just wanted to get to my apartment. My stomach was growling. And I had to pee.

Solitary on Interstate 78, I had no companion with whom to commiserate. So I reached for my tape collection and one of them spoke to me. His name was Jimmy Buffett. I cranked up the heat as hot and high as it would go, then I popped in the cassette and pushed play.

For the next 70 miles I thought about how I’d been lying by the pool just days before, and I really pondered the concept of changes in latitudes/changes in attitudes. Steel drums had me drifting south immediately.
I imagined sitting on dock sipping two more boat drinks. And crazy enough, I slowly shook the chill that had enveloped me all day. I could envision that the snow outside was really a white sandy beach, and that the blowing flakes were sea spray. The heat pouring out from my ’85 Celebrity’s vents rivaled any Florida summer wind.

In a bit of perfect comedic timing, Buffett’s song Volcano was playing just as I passed a highway sign pointing toward Three Mile Island (“Don't want to land on the Three Mile Island/Don't want to see my skin aglow”). I may have rolled the window down just a tad and sung this line at the top of my lungs, but I can’t be certain.


In any case, by the time I arrived on campus my mood had improved so much that I didn’t even mind that the parking lot hadn’t been plowed, or that snow drifts had completely blocked the sidewalk. No, in my mind I lived down by the ocean.

For all my friends in PA and NC and crazily even GA, who this week are all dealing with ice and sleet and feet of snow, I can only offer as advice that process which got me through my own snowpocalypse. Remember, it won’t last forever. Come Monday, it’ll be alright….

The Deja Vu Memorial Bridge

If you’ve ever driven I-95 in northern Maryland, chances are you’ve crossed the Millard E Tydings Bridge, which spans the Susquehanna River near Havre de Grace. As a kid, we must have gone over this bridge every year on family vacations, but I saw it differently the first time I drove it alone. For one thing, I never noticed the sign warning motorists of “Dangerous Crosswinds.” Great, I thought, I’m going to blow off the bridge. I then white-knuckled it all the way across.

It’s a beautiful view, traversing from one rocky bluff to the other.


(photo found on Flickr by Tpal3)

That first time driving it alone I was on my way from New Jersey to northern Virginia, on a weekend trip to visit my brother. It was the first real road trip I’d taken by myself, and while it was only a 4-hour drive, it was something special for me to do. Something about crossing state lines on your own feels grown up.

As I approached the bridge heading south, Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” came on the radio. Having just read the road sign about the deadly crosswinds, the lyric “fly away…high away…bye bye…” didn’t ease my nerves. Neither did the one about “walking head-on into the deep end of the river.” But somehow I made it across, and was even able to catch a few glimpses of the changing fall foliage on that October morning.

I might not have remembered what song was playing had it not been for a strange coincidence. Two days later on my return trip, the same song played on the radio as I drove northbound on the very same bridge. I was sad to be leaving my brother’s place after a really fun weekend, and the melancholy tune was fitting. It served as the opening and closing acts to the weekend.

I usually have a fleeting thought of that bridge whenever I hear that song. But two mornings ago I heard it on the way to work and I thought about it a little longer. Today is the beginning of October, almost the same time as the day I took that trip 19 years ago. While it doesn’t feel like fall yet here, the sky and sun look like fall. It was grey that morning, making me yearn for cooler weather. I found myself wishing there was a bridge nearby that I could drive across.



(photo found on Flickr by Karol A Olson)

Reality Check$

As a kid in the 1970s and ‘80s, there were a lot of different things I wanted to be when I grew up. First I thought I’d be an Olympic gymnast, then a flight attendant, psychologist, and finally a news anchor.

While my friends and I actually wanted to have “normal” careers, so many girls today have only one ambition: to become famous on a reality show. It makes me want to bang my head on my desk.

They don’t care what they have to do, whether it’s eating a live slug, cat-fighting with 19 other women over some single guy they just met, or living with a houseful of other ill-behaved, scantily-clad drunk girls vying to see who among them is the most ill-behaved. All that matters is that they do it on TV, consequences be damned.

There’s even a dreadful pop song by the Pussycat Dolls about this very topic. Some lyrics:

When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines

Ok, I admit that part of the reason I wanted to be a news anchor was because I wanted to be on TV. But I had every intention of going to college, actually studying hard and obtaining a degree in a legitimate subject, and working for the privilege of seeing my face on the evening news. It never occurred to me that I could bypass all that pesky educational stuff and make a profitable living merely by donning a push-up bra and behaving like a selfish entitled brat.

On one episode of MTV’s “True Life” show, a 19-year-old was bummed out because her parents were on her case because she didn’t have a job and wasn’t in school. She just lived at home, went out with friends, and ... I don’t know what else, not much. But she had big dreams: her goal was to be in Maxim magazine. So she found a sleazy photographer whom she paid several hundred dollars to do a “photo shoot” so she could send the shots to Maxim. Because, as we all know, this is all it takes to become a famous model.

The poor girl couldn’t even formulate a sentence without using “like” four or five times and she still never got a real point across. But nothing was going to stand in the way of her dream, certainly not lack of communication in her native tongue.

Now I’ve got a confession
When I was young I wanted attention
And I promised myself that I’d do anything
Anything at all for them to notice me

I don’t know who I’m most annoyed at: the girls with no ambition, their parents for not having a lick of influence over them, or the people who invented reality television in the first place. What I do know, though, is that listing “last girl standing from Bad Girls Club, season 5” on a resume isn’t going to push anyone over the top for that law clerkship job. Those appearance paychecks run out quickly, but the after effects of many of those shows linger far longer than their participants might prefer. The public’s collective memory is quite clear and has a penchant for remembering embarrassing detals for years.

Unbelievably, I would have to agree with the Pussycat Dolls here...

Be careful what you wish for
Cuz you just might get it
You just might get it
You just might get it.

The Song Remembers When

There’s a Trisha Yearwood song from several years back that begins:

I was standin' at the counter
I was waitin' for the change
When I heard that old familiar music start

It continues to recount how even though years have passed and “though I had forgotten all about it, the song remembers when.”

How often do we find ourselves going about our daily lives when a song comes on the radio or in the grocery store and we’re suddenly floored by memories that only seconds ago were buried in the deep recesses of our minds? Sometimes it’s a memory of heartache upon hearing what used to be “our song” from loves past. Other times we’re reduced to a brief trance as we’re mentally transported back to a time and place decades gone but crystal clear in our mind’s eye.

Earlier this evening I was engrossed in writing a travel piece when Tie a Yellow Ribbon by Tony Orlando and Dawn came on the radio via the Saturday night oldies show. Suddenly I remembered being in our big green ’71 Chrysler, driving down Route 60 in my hometown with my dad. We had just gone to the post office and were stopped at a red light in front of the big catholic church when it came on the radio. I was tagging along while Dad did some errands that day as I was too young to be in school yet. I suppose my dad might have actually been singing along, which was a rare occurrence and probably why this stayed with me. I remember nothing else about that day, but I remember those moments of that song.

I also have a cache of what I call “vacation songs” that trigger memories. When I was a kid we usually drove up North for our family vacations, spending several days in the car. Going up I-95 you lose radio stations every hour or two and constantly have to find a more local one. Invariably they’re all playing the same current top 40 songs, so we’d hear the same songs several times each day, to the point of begging the radio gods to please find a new song for us weary travelers!

Because of this, I remember where we went on vacation each year by the song I associate with each location. Summer of ’79 was the Reunited vacation thanks to Peaches and Herb, so that was the year we had a family reunion in the Midwest. Summer of ’81 was the Queen of Hearts vacation (Juice Newton), which means New Jersey. Summer of ’83 was the Flashdance vacation, so that means we went to New England that year as I remember hearing it in the train station at Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.

Even 25 years later, I always think of these places and their respective scenery when I hear these songs. When I hear the theme from Flashdance I’m once again sitting in the backseat of our old van, counting license plates and reading the road atlas.

As Trisha’s lyrics say, the moment seemed to freeze/and we turned the music up and sang along.

Yeah, and even if the whole world has forgotten
The song remembers when.




What songs are strong memory triggers for you?

School Days, Ghoul Days

One of my best memories from elementary school in the ‘70s-‘80s was Halloween. Every year my public school hosted a fundraising Halloween carnival on the Saturday before the holiday, held on school grounds. Each grade or class sponsored a booth, game, or event. The kid whose dad had a big tractor ran a hay ride through the back field. One 5th grade class made a haunted house in their portable classroom where you had to stick your hands in bowls full of scary items: the bowl of eyeballs was made up of peeled grapes, the bowl of brains was actually a bowlful of cold spaghetti, and the vat of blood was just Elmer’s glue. But the power of suggestion was strong in the darkened room with spooky sounds playing on the crackly record player.

There was always a judged costume contest, so everyone showed up fully involved. Since this was back when children were still allowed to walk places unaccompanied by adults, you’d usually see several other kids walking down the street in costume toward the school with you.

The prizes for the costumes and the various games were simple, usually just candy or a cheap trinket. I once won an Erik Estrada “CHiPs” poster there. But we all loved this annual event as if it was the most exclusive black-tie event of the social season.

In music class during the week before Halloween we always cheered when the teacher brought out the film strip projector. Every year we spent that class watching a sing-along film that took traditional tunes and changed the lyrics to fit the holiday. My favorite one of all was to the tune of “There is a Tavern in the Town,” which was changed to “There is a Haunted House in Town.” Even at 37 I find myself singing this to myself every October. The lyrics as I remember them:

There is a Haunted House in town
(in the town)
Where all the creatures gather 'round
(gather 'round)
Where the cobwebs hangAnd the window shutters bang
And all the creatures gather 'round!

There is a Haunted House in town
(in the town)
Where all the walls are tumbling down
(tumbling down)
Don’t you trick or treat, or YOU’RE the one they’ll eat
When the moon shines on the Haunted House!

--bridge--
Oh the bats and cats and witches
Keep the skeletons in stitches
As they sip their spider cider in the Haun-ted House

They're there!
They're there!
They're really there!
(really there)
Watch out
Be Careful
And beware!
(oh bewaaaare)
Don't you trick or treat
Or you're the one they'll eat
When the moon shines on the Haunted House!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek
Creeeeeeeeeeeek
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek
Shrieeeeeeeeeeek!

On a side note, I credit this film strip for solidifying in my brain the difference between there, their, and they’re. Those sneaky teachers always found a way to teach us even when we didn’t realize we were learning!

I absolutely loved my elementary school experience. I know that in many school districts music classes are being cut for lack of funding of the arts. It makes me sad to hear this because every learning experience at that age is beneficial. What seems simple and merely fun at the time can still teach concepts that last a lifetime.

I tip my witch’s hat to Rosewood Elementary. Every year I miss you but I thank you for so many memories.

Is it Love, or is it Memorex?

A conversation on Facebook yesterday reminded me of a Gen X mainstay of teenage emotional angst: the mix tape. In the intervening decades since my high school days, 21st century technological advances have relegated cassette tapes to packed boxes in the backs of closets, and even a mention of the words “mix tape” to anyone under the age of 20 induces perplexed reactions. A friend said, “You know, our word “mix” is gone, it is very sad. Now I guess it is a playlist? I liked mix better.” Today’s young’uns probably think “mix tape” is an assortment of sticky substances of masking, duct, and scotch.

But I fondly remember the forethought, effort, and emotion that went into creating the masterpiece of the mix tape, seemingly unrelated songs brought together to express secret crushes, unrequited love, or remembrance of crazy times. Hours were spent coming up with the list of songs, getting the sequence of tunes just right to configure the most perfect segues, and in the process of finding all the songs on your albums or borrowing them from your friends. Sometimes it even required the biggest time waster of all…waiting for hours for a song to come on the radio with tape recorder in hand so you could record it from speaker to tape player. That was some quality remixing there!


The final product felt like you had poured your soul into this little plastic container of magnetic ribbon. All the words you could not compose yourself were now neatly packaged for your beloved. The only thing lacking was a title for the tape. “Good Stuff” was common, or “My Faves.” You didn’t want to be too committal on the title, it was crucial to leave an air of mystery as to what was inside. Once named, all that was left to decide was the mode of delivery. Would you sneak it into their school locker? Trust a friend to give it to them? Leave it on the windshield of their car for them to find on the drive home? It was imperative that no one other than the intended recipient got their hands on your masterpiece. The embarrassment of someone else learning your true feelings was to be avoided at all costs!

And when somebody made a mix tape for you--especially someone of the other sex--it was as if Casey Kasem was sending out a long-distance dedication just to you. That meant undeniably that not only did they LIKE you, but that they THOUGHT about you, a lot, or at least for an hour or two it took them to make the tape. Yes, the mix tape was tangible proof you could show your friends to prove that somebody liked you.


But occasionally there was that uncomfortable moment where you reached a song on the mix that seemed questionable, even inappropriate. “Ohmygod, why did he put that on there? What does that mean? Is he kidding? Is he mad at me now? Should I ask him about it?” Mix tapes often ignited more questions than they answered, thereby not only sustaining teen angst, but firmly securing it into a long-term seat on the emotional rollercoaster.

The worst mix tape to receive was the I Like You But Only As A Friend mix. I got one of those once and it only had, like, 3 songs on it. See, he didn’t even want to put effort into the breakup, just 3 songs and then 33 minutes of dead air. I still can’t hear Nelson’s “After the Rain” without thinking of that jerk. Don’t be afraid to lose what was never meant to be. This from the same guy who once made me a tape that included Journey’s “Open Arms.” Where’d the love go? I guess we sailed on together, but drifted apart.

Sigh.

To return to the days of my double tape deck with double-speed dubbing, to bust out my Journey, Wham!, and Jack Wagner records, to once again play the role of teenage deejay in the nightclub of junior high life…would be to once again remember how tortuous young love was. Rock on, friends.

Where Everybody Knows Your Song

TV sitcoms used to be events. They used to have theme songs that everyone knew and could sing along to in their entirety. Theme songs told the back story or the premise of the show so that even if you’d never seen the show, you knew what you were getting into simply by watching the opening credits. They gave the emotional feel of the show and they were contagiously singalongable. Find me a Gen X-er who can’t still sing the entire theme songs from Cheers, WKRP in Cincinnati, or my personal favorite, The Facts of Life. When the TV was on, you heard the theme song begin and you knew you had about 45 seconds to finish brushing your teeth, yell to the rest of family “IT’S COMING ON!!!” and run to the living room before you missed anything.

Now, there are no theme songs. You better have your arse on the couch at precisely 9 p.m. or you’ll miss the whole plot.

And remember how exciting it was to start the new fall season and see all the revamped show intros? In them we’d get a sneak peak of clips of upcoming episodes, and then all season you’d watch in anticipation for when you’d finally see the episode where that clip of Tony Danza in the shower acting like he’s doing a TV commercial with his shampoo comes from! Or, why is Tootie covered in paint? What kind of hijinks ensued to create such a scene? The anticipation! My 10-year-old mind could hardly wait!

Why, network gods, did you do away with the sitcom theme song!? Why have you forsaken our love of schmaltzy rhyme with upbeat tempos? These theme songs made me believe in the human spirit! They made believe that yes, I, too, can be standing tall on the wings of my dreams, just like Balki Bartokomous! When the world never seemed to be living up to my dreams, suddenly I was finding out the facts of life were all about ME.

I beg of the network execs, bring back the sitcom theme song! If you did, you would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.

Sit, Ubu, sit.