Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 27

Perfecting the Second Pancake

Have you ever heard the old adage that says parenting is like making pancakes? You should probably just throw the first one out and start with number two.

It’s not the fault of the pancake batter, of course: it’s about the cook and the pan who aren’t quite ready for the job at hand. The irony is that it is only thanks to the sturdy resilience of that first pancake, the practice it gives the cook and the seasoning it gives the pan, that subsequent hotcakes will cook up with ease. (Let’s give it up for the sacrifice of the first pancake.)

Well, now that our oldest daughter is two weeks into her college classes and things have settled down into their new rhythm around here with only three of us at home, my husband and I can turn our attention to a new goal: perfecting the second pancake.

We’ve just moved back to the two-on-one parenting scenario that our oldest kid was subjected to for the first three years of her life. Only this is even better, because we actually know what we are doing! We have parented a teenage girl/pancake before! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST PANCAKE EVER.

It helps that our second kid is hardwired to be reasonable, risk-averse but not too much so, confident without being sassy. She is admired by babies and old people. She doesn’t Snapchat, though her Instagram speed scrolling is a little too practiced for my tastes.

But perfect, she is not. There are three areas emerging this fall as real growth opportunities, if only she will accede to the coaching that her father and I now have unlimited time and focus to provide.

1. Think Yourself Tall! My husband is 6’1”, and my driver’s license has me at 5’8” which is at least as truthy as the weight printed on it. When our oldest daughter wears heels, she enjoys looking down into her father’s face. All three of us can reach things on the top shelves in the kitchen, and can still see the band if we stand in the back of a venue.

And then there’s the youngest, who stubbornly refuses to be more than 5’5”. That actually makes her one inch taller than the average American woman, taller than her godmother and aunt, a perfectly normal size. Our shorty doesn’t want to be a millimeter taller, because she’s at a good ballet height, meaning most male partners can lift her with herniating something.

For some reason, though, her father has embarked on a rigorous program of willing his youngest to be taller. “Did you do the height visualization exercises I gave you today?” he will ask her when he walks in the door from work. “Can you ask your tall friend Amy for height tips? Did you eat lunch with Tiny Bess? I don’t think that’s a good precedent.” To which the 5’5” daughter serenely says, “No, yes, and I think I may have even gotten shorter today, Dad.” That’s his signal to groan, lean his palm against the kitchen doorframe on which our kids’ heights have been recorded since 2003, and sigh, “I just don’t think you’re trying hard enough.” She then walks under his arm toward her room, without having to stoop.

She’s killing him, one non-inch at a time. And this is not an isolated discussion. This is a six-times-a-week debate. Why do you think the older daughter chose to go to college so far from home?

2. Neither a borrower nor…no, just don’t be a borrower. The girls freely traded clothes in the past couple of years, by which I mean the youngest daughter always took her older sister’s clothes and mostly without asking. Over the summer when the older girl was away working at camp, the younger one shopped her sisters closet with abandon, the extent of which is only now becoming clear that the older one is unpacked at college and has no shirts.

“Mom, have you seen that black tank top with lace on it?” she called to ask the other day. I glanced up to see her sister sitting at the dining room table, doing her homework and wearing said shirt. After I got off the phone I said, “Did you really think she wouldn’t notice you took her shirt, when you wore it for your school picture?”

The clothes are slowly making their way back to their rightful owner in a convoy of care packages, but now there’s a borrowing-clothes vacuum. So the other night our littlest pancake went off to babysit wearing her father’s Adidas sweatpants topped with one of my sweaters. See height difference, above. We are considering putting locks on the closet before she is mistaken for a hobo.

3. Put things away the 17th time we ask. This is not a child for whom the “put it back where and how you found it” rule has ever resonated. In her world, you open a drawer for a hairbrush, and then just leave it open, in case someone else wants to come look for a hairbrush. By not putting it back the way it was, you are actually saving your family members the hard work of opening a drawer.

This applies to shoes, cooking utensils, and borrowed Adidas sweatpants. Remember that scene in Last of the Mohicans when Daniel Day Lewis and the second-to-last and last of the Mohicans come across the pioneer family that’s been killed, and leave the bodies where they find them so they don’t alert the marauding Hurons to their presence? Madeleine Stowe protests that they need a proper burial, and she and Daniel Day-Lewis click into that fight/lust chemistry that makes this the best movie of the ‘90s? Our second pancake would have been totally comfortable with Daniel’s plan. “Good idea, Hawkeye, I vote to leave them too, just give me a quick sec to see if they have a hairbrush drawer that needs opening,” she would have said.

We are too experienced as parents to believe we will get her to put stuff away the first time we ask. First pancake taught us to be realistic in our goals. We believe that with both Mom and Dad nagging together, there’s a chance she will put things away by the 17th time we ask her, 15th if we’re going for a stretch goal.

And if nothing else, we’re ensuring that second pancake also has good incentive to go away to college someday.

Why yes I will get up and dance around my office to this one.

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What’s Your National Park Story?

Beautiful Bryce

This month the National Park Service celebrates 100 years, and I wanted to send a little note of appreciation.

Most of the park-going of my youth was the Adirondack park, the largest publicly protected area in the lower 48 (fun fact: it’s a combination of state and privately-owned land.) It wasn’t until I moved out to Arizona for grad school that I started spending quality time in our country’s national parks.

Specifically, the Grand Canyon. When you go to a grad school that schedules only introductory language courses on Fridays, you’re going to have three-day weekends pretty much from the second semester on. And it took 3.5 hours to drive from campus to the canyon’s South Rim. And all the cute boys were in the Outdoors Club. So suddenly, I was a capital-C Camper.

The first trip I signed up for, I didn’t know a soul. So the club president suggested I share a tent with another girl who had signed up and didn’t know anyone. I’ll shortcut it for you: within six hours of setting up our tent we were sharing makeup we’d surreptitiously snuck into our backpacks, by the following year we were sharing an apartment, and within five years we were sharing bridesmaid duties for one another. That first weekend in a national park was FORMATIVE, is my point. Our friendship took root as we camped in the snow on that first night at the South Rim, and blossomed as we hiked down into the canyon, shedding layers as the temperature climbed into the 70s.  Hiking in a tank top and avoiding tarantulas, as I looked up to see tiny figures of tourists standing at the snow at the top, has to be one of my fondest memories of grad school, Intro to French notwithstanding.

There was another memorable Outdoor Club adventure into the Grand Canyon with the aforementioned club president, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, five other students, one professor, and me. The professor smoked hibiscus buds and drank aloe vera from glass bottles he’d packed down. On the second day, we hiked fourteen miles to the Colorado River and back from our campsite, divvying up the water to a few key people. Those key people ended up hiking together, unfortunately, while the rest of us struggled behind like lonely figures from an Andrew Wyeth painting. On the slow steep hike up the side of the canyon back to the rim, my then-boyfriend-now-husband said, “Ugh, this is boring, do you mind if I run?” and RAN to the top with a fully loaded backpack. I on the other hand walked with a guy who struggled uphill until he realized that if he uttered the word “SHIT” with each footstep, he felt better. (It’s true. It’s science.) I loved that trip. So weird. So funny. So beautiful.

During my last semester, my husband had already graduated and was working back east. He flew out for a long weekend to visit and a dear, sweet, gullible friend said, “Nance, take my car for the weekend if you guys want to do something!” Oh, did we want to do something. We wanted to bag some National Parks on what little time we figured we had left living in the Southwest. So we drove the borrowed station wagon north to Utah on a Friday and hiked in both Zion National Park and Bryce National Park before returning Sunday night, having put so, so many miles on his odometer that I still can’t really look that friend in the eye. Not even after we’d filled the entire back of his car with beer. Still worth the shame – every landscape was spectacular.

That was the trip on which I bought a little National Park passport with a goal to get stamps at every park I visited. I have zero idea where that thing went, and although I’ve visited more since – Olympic National Park in Washington, plus all the big NorCal parks like Yosemite, Alcatraz, Golden Gate, Point Reyes, Muir Woods, and Redwood – this 100 Year Anniversary has me mostly aware of where I haven’t been yet. I’ve never been to Yellowstone, or the Florida Everglades, or Glacier, or Denali, or Acadia…ugh. So many to see, so little time. So many adventures to be had.

So tell me: what’s your National Park story? And what stamp should I get first, if I ever find that passport?

Back in the day we always played Treat Her Right on our road trips, to National Parks and beyond. Best unappreciated blues band ever.

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Toothquake

Back in June I started a new vanity project – realigning my once-straight teeth that had, along with every every other g-d body part thanks to aging, started to rebel against their landlord. On went the unanticipated “tooth anchors” and over those went the Invisalign trays and up went the pain factor every Wednesday, when I crack a new pack of trays to wedge over my – yes, I can see it a little now that I’m nine weeks in – slowly straightening teeth.

What I neglected to tell you is that for 20 minutes every day, I have to sit with what looks like some sort of a fetish device in my mouth, micro-shaking my teeth into place.

This little “dental accelerator” consists of a rubber mouthpiece that you bite down on gently, and a vibrating handle that is so smart that it a.) gives you a signal when you are halfway through the 20-minute allotment and b.) has a USB port that allows the orthodontist to see exactly when and how long it was in use, via an Excel spreadsheet that I have to print out and bring to my appointments. It’s not like flossing, in other words, which I tell the doctor I do every single day when we all, I assume, understand that to mean “every other week and only after eating corn.”

On July 27, according to the data, my toothquaker shook for about six hours when it was buried deep in my luggage on a coast-to-coast flight. The good news is that my spreadsheet stats look AWESOME and if the orthodontist gives out any kind of prize for overachievement, I’ve got it in the bag. The bad news is that someone at the TSA probably thought it was a far different kind of vibrating device.

Anyway, my mouth shaker is supposed to complement the Invisaligners by micropulsing the teeth into their new position faster, and make the whole thing less painful. So says the orthodontist, and because like Agent Scully I want to believe, I have used it religiously for the past two months. Even if it means causing episodes of convulsing laughter for various family members.

I used it when I was helping care for my dad in July, when every night in the guest room at my parent’s house saw a different sibling or niece staying in the twin bed across from mine. The day my sister walked back into the guest room to get something and saw me sitting there obediently, mouth vibrator rattling away, she fell down laughing to the floor, got up, dusted herself off, and then fell down laughing again. The cycle probably would have repeated for another half hour or so if the doorbell hadn’t rung.

When I finally got home again in August and fired it up for my 20-minute session one Sunday morning, it was the first time my husband had seen me use it. “You can’t talk when it’s in?” he marveled, the grin spreading wide on his face as I understood he was fixin’ to rev up the Contrarian Statement Engine to 11, because I had no way to rebut. I tried to make the flare of my nostrils do the talking.

I often use the device when I’m at my desk writing, since I’d probably be clenching my jaw in silence around that time anyway. The problem is that the device makes the tip of my nose micro-shake, too, which means I’m constantly reaching up to tap my nose like some sort of new nervous tic.

So here I am, clenching down on a rubber grip, shaking my mouth, flaring my nostrils, scratching my nose, and complaining about tooth pain.

Do I look younger and cuter yet?

Catching these guys with Tallest Man on Earth at the Greek in Berkeley in October, can’t wait!

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College Drop-off Perspective

Our daughter had one of the earliest start dates for college of anyone we knew. As of tomorrow she will have been there a week already. So for all my friends still dreading the drop-off, I thought I’d share our story, and maybe impart a little calm.

Regular readers of Midlife Mixtape know this has been a trying summer, with my dad passing away in July. Aside from the attendant grief, there are other challenges we are navigating on my mom’s behalf that will require stamina and deliberation and wisdom. There has not been a lot of joy during these not-at-all-lazy days of summer.

Back in the old days, meaning before my dad fainted on the golf course in early June, I expected the college drop-off week would be difficult, saying our goodbyes and adjusting to the new energy of only three people (and no goofy distracting dog; he died, too, in the past year) in the house. I allowed that I would probably sob when we left her, would sit in her empty bedroom at home and lament her absence, all that stuff. I was ready for it. I was going to give that sadness some real estate.

And then everything got turned around on us with Dad. The unexpected silver lining was that I hit my outer limit of sorrow. And suddenly the college drop-off became the happiest thing I could think of.

Sorrow was nowhere in the vicinity when I finally set foot on a campus I’d heard so much about, and found that the descriptions I’d heard and read suffered a glaring lack of adjectives. Big red brick buildings accented by graceful cream-painted columns, a view of the Susquehanna Valley, wide lawns crisscrossed by broad pathways. “Just imagine when these walkways are filled with attractive undergrads!” I marveled to my daughter as we wandered the mostly empty campus the night before move-in. She rolled her eyes but seriously, how could having young, intellectual, athletic people sprinkled like powdered sugar on a funnel cake be a bad thing?

On Move-In Day, the Orientation Staff was primed and ready. As each overpacked car disgorged a slightly nervous looking student-and-parent trio, an Orientation volunteer would ask your name and your home state. All around us we heard, “THIS IS MICHAEL FROM TEXAS!” and “THIS IS BECCA FROM NEW JERSEY!” and then the Orientation team would whoop and holler and generally act like the presence of this particular human being was the exact thing they’d been waiting for all day, nay, all summer. Again, as a mom: how could you feel sad when your child receives such a welcome?

As the day unfolded, the prospect of sadness seemed increasingly ludicrous. The quad dorm room was spacious, the new roommates interesting and friendly, the food at the student center delicious and free flowin’. The address by the dean of the Engineering Department made me wish I was studying fluid mechanics (just for a second, though.) By the time we reunited with our daughter later in the afternoon– the savvy administrators separating families from students through two tracks of programming, assuredly to make the final separation that much easier – she was chatting easily with her hall mates. My heart grew lighter and lighter as the time to leave approached.

There was even room for hastily-procured groovy chairs

There was one hard, hard moment: watching my husband and younger daughter say goodbye to our girl. I’m a WASP from way back, so I can bury my own feelings to a level that will withstand a nuclear blast, but when those two are sad, forget it. Still, I figured the worst thing I could do was follow their lead, so I became even more maniacally cheerful, as we walked to the car and drove away.

Now we are home, and I continue to feel 98% thrilled at our new arrangement. She’s where she’s supposed to be, I am running the dishwasher less, and I only had to fill out one set of high school registration forms so I didn’t get writer’s cramp.

But today, finally, a well of dark pain sprang from the center of my soul.

My daughter is in the Arts Residency and is taking a class called “Pop and Protest,” which “investigates the roles and responsibilities for musicians within popular culture, giving particular attention to their engagement with social and political movements.” On the first day of class, the professor showed them the video for Beyonce’s “Formation.” The assignment? Think about it and be ready to discuss. As my daughter said to me, “I wanted to tell him, ‘Professor, I’ve been thinking about that video for MONTHS.’” Her only textbook is a Spotify playlist. And with each Physics assignment, her professor includes a “Pre-Class Entertainment” playlist of music he will play during class – the one she forwarded to me had Bowie, Cage the Elephant, and Bill Withers on it. “He asked for suggestions so I went Rilo Kiley,” she texted me. Tears sprang to my eyes.

What is that awful, jagged emotion I am feeling now?

Oh that’s right. Jealousy.

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My Late Summer 2016 Playlist

The upside of feeling down: with very little energy to talk to people, I’m taking refuge in some really good music this summer. Here are the songs and albums I’ve been playing a lot this summer, some new, some old, some rediscovered.

Jenny Lewis’ new side project, NAF (that’s Nice As F*ck, which was super fun to explain to the daughter with whom I share an ITunes library when it popped up on her phone as she was working as a camp counselor.) The sweetest sounding riot grrrrl musicians.

Speaking of lady musicians, I thought of this song the other day and downloaded it and I cannot cannot cannot get it out of my head. When I hear this Belly singing “Feed the Tree,” I actually miss the ‘90s and black chunky heels and Twig lipstick from MAC.

Ok, I’m just going to admit that I originally thought the lyrics to this were “I am the captain, you are the cove.” Even though the name of the song is “I Am a Nightmare,” I didn’t quite make the mental leap that maybe that’s what they were singing in the super catchy chorus. Here’s the lyric video for Brand New’s “I Am a Nightmare,” so the mondegreen doesn’t happen to you.

I have been wearing out the virtual grooves on “Ain’t No Man” from the Avett Brothers’ latest release, True Sadness, but I quite like this one too: “Satan Pulls the Strings.” It carries a definite whiff of “Devil Went Down to Georgia.” The devil must like fiddles.

The other day I was eating a tub of Pub Cheese from Trader Joe’s (don’t judge) and I got really mad at my father because he died before I had a chance to tell him about it. He loved cheddar and horseradish – this would have been his JAM. I realized it was ridiculous to be mad at him about pub cheese, but still. That’s why I love “Good Grief” by Bastille: it’s the funny kind of sad. Warning, video is NSFW.

I wrote about my Har Mar Superstar concert experience back in May and, o happy day, he’s announced a show in San Francisco in November. I’ve already gotten my ticket and am strong arming friends left and right to come with me – join us! (Tickets here.) Bet ya he does this solid cover tribute to a fellow Minnesotan. I have GOT to make sure my poncho is back from the dry cleaner before that show.

What’s on your must-hear list for Summer 2016? Leave it in the comments please!

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Dorm Room Decor

This post is sponsored by Minted.com.

The time has finally come: our firstborn goes to college next week, 2,735 miles away from home.

We are excited for her. The school she’s attending in the Keystone State is one I used to drive past all the time on my own college journey from Rochester to U Penn, set up high on a hill. All I knew about it during those years was “that campus is beautiful,” which either or both my parents would say whenever we shot past it headed south. I’ve still never set foot on it, but when my husband took our daughter there last year for a visit they both came home starry-eyed (and raving about the dining hall food.)

When it turned out that the university offers both the mechanical engineering and ballet that she’s interested in pursuing, it all fell into place. That makes it much easier to know that she is going to spend the next four years living a short 40 hours’ drive away from me. (True, she is only 3 hours’ drive from my East Coast family, and only 1.5 hours from my sister’s office. Believe that I figured all of that in when I threw my unvarnished support behind her choice.)

Out here in Cali, not many people have heard of her school, much as I had never heard of the small liberal arts colleges here in the Golden State when I first got here. Pomona? Harvey Mudd? Claremont McKenHuh? But our kid spent this summer working at camp on the East Coast, and when we visited her a few weeks into that job, one of the first things she said to me was, “Mom! People here have heard of my school!”

That shift in perspective – that chance to really understand how life can look different from the right-hand side of the country – is one of the reasons we are okay with sending her off to the East Coast for school. Not forever, maybe, but four years. And if that turns into forever, well, she was born to parents who moved cross country ourselves twenty years ago. My husband and I can hardly blame her if she decides to do the same, retracing our moving van route.

Still, I know she is proud of her Cali roots. And in the dorm room she’ll share with roommates from across the country and world over the next four years, we want to help her rep her state and keep us close in spirit. But given the already gigantic pile of goods we have bivouacked at her grandparents’ house in Rochester, plus the one is steadily forming in the center of her bedroom floor, we need to do so in as compact a manner as possible.

So I am completely here for the framed state-shaped photo gifts from Minted.com. How cute is this California version? Answer: as cute as the one for your state. (Bonus for Michiganders: the mitten shape and UP means you get FOUR photos.) It’s chic, but it’s also subliminal, come back, see?

For those of us praying from some semblance of national unity in 2016, as well as an expeditious end to this election season, there’s one in the shape of These Ostensibly United States of America.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for dorm room décor at Minted.com – there are also and skylines, you could use to commemorate a standout campus landmark, and this customizable funky state license plate print. Forget to give someone a graduation gift back in June? No you didn’t. You were just considering your options (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) Any of these would make really thoughtful gifts for a kid moving across town or across the country onto a college campus.

And maybe, if we’ve done it right, they’ll be as anxious to come home at the end of first semester as we will be to see them.

Welcome to your (new) world, my girl. Let it be your fantasy… New single from Grouplove’s upcoming album, Big Mess…

                   
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Turn Down the Music and Read: Let’s Go Crazy

It wasn’t until I was all the way back in Oakland at the end of July that the fog lifted enough for me to realize: the two books I bought to read at my dad’s bedside this summer were stories about celebrities who died in 2016. I’ve already recommended On Bowie by Rob Sheffield, a book-length love letter to David Bowie. Now I’ll do the same for the second book which I devoured last weekend – Let’s Go Crazy: The Making of Purple Rain, by Alan Light, which came out in 2014. Before…you know.

Light, whose music bona fides include stints as editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin magazines, tells the story of how a musician with rather limited commercial and artistic success at the start of the ‘80s basically believed himself into becoming a supernova in 1984. While Light didn’t speak to Prince for this project, he’d interviewed him many times over the years and weaves those archival interviews into those of people who did give him lots of access, including Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman, and the movie’s director, Albert Magnoli.

The book is richly detailed and takes its time in exploring the relatively short expanse between when Prince said, “I want to do a movie,” and when that movie made it into theaters and made him a household word. Each song, each scene, each character is described in loving depth that will be welcome to anyone who has spent significant time wondering, for instance, why Appolonia gets back on the motorcycle after Prince tricks her into purifying herself in Not-Lake-Minnetonka. (Answer: because he’s Prince. And you would have done the same.)

But first, you have to get over the fact that the book is written as if Prince were still alive, because he was at the time this book came out. Honestly, I struggled with Chapter One. Every time Light says something like, “Prince says” or “Prince does” in the present tense, I would just overturn the book on my lap and think, “NO HE DOESN’T, NOT ANYMORE” and then gaze into the middle distance. It’s especially hard to read Light’s pronouncements about what will or won’t happen to Prince in the future, the kind of conjecture that’s easy to throw around when you think people will be around forever.

Once I got over that, though, I truly enjoyed this book. Before he was a music writer, Light was a dorky teenage Prince fan like the rest of us, and the book is a nice balance of both the music insider’s view and the fan’s reverence for the movie and the music. Whether he writes about being transfixed at hearing “When Doves Cry” for the first time on the radio, or picking the right purple accessory the first time he’s going to see Prince play live, or bonding with college class mates freshman year over how many times they’d seen the movie, he’s basically describing moments from MY teenage life. (Or moments from Ann Imig’s pre-teen years, as she once relayed so winningly here. )

When I’d finished the book, more than anything I just wanted to sit and listen to the album all the way through. Luckily, it happened while I was in Austin staying with my sister in law and her boyfriend who is a huge audiophile and whose vinyl collection is the Eighth Wonder of the World. James stationed me carefully between two speakers on Saturday night and, much like the old Maxell commercial, I just sat back and let the music blow me backward for 45 minutes (yup, that whole album is 45 minutes. Seems longer, in a good way, right?)

Later we hit Waterloo Records in Austin and I bought my own copy on vinyl. I cradled that thing on the Southwest flight home more carefully than I did the girls when I used to fly with them as babies. (Hey, babies are bendy, but a record isn’t.)

Bowie’s gone, Prince is gone, Dad’s gone.

Thank goodness the ability of books and music to carry us away is eternal.

If you didn’t realize it before you read this book, you’ll understand how zealously Prince protected his intellectual property, and that meant – and means – aggressively removing illegally shared videos from YouTube as soon as they go up. About the only live performance of this song you can reliably find is when he played Purple Rain in the pouring rain at the Super Bowl aka The Best Halftime Show Ever.

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What’s Helping Right Now

I have been home from my dad’s funeral for almost a week and am still a little numb. It feels like I am wrapped up in cotton padding, going through all the regular motions but having to put a little extra effort in to achieve the same outcome. I think this is probably good. I don’t want to bounce back. Crawling back feels like the appropriate speed for a loss this profound.

I have been on the receiving end of so many kind notes and gestures in the past weeks and I will do my best to thank everyone individually for your empathy and support. But here, in no particular order and with no particular selection parameters, are things have brought me comfort and much-needed distraction in the past days.

On Bowie, by Rob Sheffield

A book-length eulogy for the Thin White Duke, by my very favorite music writer. If you’re a Bowie fan, it’s a must read, and if you weren’t (WHAT?) you will be by the last page.

Losing You, by Solange

It’s from 2012 but I only just stumbled across this video, which is so beautiful, and the beats are so lush. I can’t stop playing it.

The National at the Greek Theater, Berkeley, July 29 2016

I had bought tix for Maria and me to see this show months ago. The National – the deepest-voiced indie band in rock – is one of my favorite bands but I’ve never seen them play live. Given the timing, I knew I wouldn’t be writing a review for the blog. I figured I was just going to sit back and let the music wash over me like the lump I am right now. And that was pretty much how the evening was going down last Friday – good show, amusing to see lead singer Matt Berninger down many drinks between verses and then pace the stage like The Worriedest Rock Star Ever. I talked a lot to Maria. I feel like I was probably one of those annoying concert talkers that I usually hate, but I just had some stuff to say.

BUT DRUNK MATT BERNINGER WAS NOT HAVING MY GRIEF-FUELED AMBIVALENCE.

So – and I swear to you this is true – toward the end of the show Matt jumps off the front of the stage and plunges into the audience, with two roadies scrambling behind him to feed slack into his long, long, mic cord.

Here’s a picture of the Greek I took at another show, so you can see how it’s laid out – a standing room floor, which was completely packed on Friday night, and then stone seats that slope steeply upward. Maria and I sat there in the stone seats, way out of the fray.

Except Drunk Matt WAS the fray. He put his head down like he was a rugby player and just plowed through the standing room crowd, farther than I’ve ever seen an artist wade into an audience, still singing, still pulling that mic cord behind him, and suddenly he angled right toward our section.

Then he hopped up to the walkway that separates the standing room from the seats, put his head down to knock fans out of the way, and just kept climbing skyward. Still singing. What is happening? Surely he’s not going to climb this far OH my god he is coming right at us.

HOW LONG IS THAT CORD ANYWAY?

He is stopping at our row! Of all the places in this entire theater he’s picked our row. He’s pivoting!

He is going to make me pay attention tonight. BECAUSE HE IS ABOUT TO FALL ON US.

I’ll stop here to explain that Maria is about as big as my pinkie finger and ever since we met in college, I have had a very “Me Tarzan You Jane” reflex when she’s threatened. And frankly, this whole scene reminded me of when you see the drunkest guy at a college frat party coming at you, forcing you to run an avoidance scramble.

So as Maria cowered and tried to get out of his way, I put both hands on Matt Berninger’s dramatically listing torso and hurled him to my right, to get him to fall on the next audience members, not us.

Then I turned to look at Maria, and Matt’s mic cord clotheslined me in the eyeballs.

Concerts can be so exciting!

ChocoPretzel pie from Pietisserie in Oakland

My friend Muffy didn’t even know that I’d been eating the bags of chocolate covered pretzels from Trader Joe’s like they were individual snack sizes. She just showed up at my door with this. Which might not technically be an individual snack size, but I tried to make it so.

A visit from this dog

My neighbors with the baby came over to see Mr. Tanner here and they let me hold the baby on my lap while she petted the dog and then my heart melted into a puddle.

Returning daughters

One is home from her camp counselor summer and getting ready for college, and we are picking the other one up from her summer ballet intensive in a couple of days. Goodbye, clean counter tops and artificially low grocery bills and bathroom drains unclogged by long hair.

Hello, regular life. I’m glad you’re back. I promise I’ll catch up with you soon.

                   
CommentsIt's basically my dream to have a rock star find his way to me ... by MariaThis is a great story. I feel like Im looking through a ... by Helen KhoRelated StoriesConcert Goer Group TherapyIn Memoriam: My DadBaby Therapy 

In Memoriam: My Dad

My beloved dad passed away on July 20 after a brief and sudden illness. Here is his obituary if you’d like to learn more about him. This is what I read at his funeral on July 25.

Leaning on him in 1972 and 2009, and every year between and since

You’ve heard my sister Sally talk about Dad’s love of the Fire Department, and my brother Larry talk about his love of Camp Gorham. My job? “Talk about Dad’s love of family for 3-5 minutes.”

I make my living as a writer and I’ve never gotten a more intimidating assignment. On the morning I wrote these remarks, I took a walk first to clear my head, looked up to Heaven, and said, “Jeez, Dad, not so much source material please!”

I mean, I could do five minutes alone on Dad’s relationship with Uncle Ray, a guy who looks so much like my father that when I walked into the house Wednesday morning and saw him standing in the kitchen, I thought, “Whoa, Dad’s better!” The two dark haired boys from Utica had so many exploits together over the years, most of which I am pretty sure they haven’t told their kids about.

Or I could do five minutes on his relationship with Mom’s family: Aunt Margaret and her husband Jack, in whom my dad found a kindred soul for shenanigans, and the fabulous Forbes boys. Then there’s Mom’s adored sister Eunice, whom we call Aunt Noonie. Particularly in the last few years, Dad has been a pillar of support for Noonie, whether driving her to medical appointments, balancing her checkbook, or admonishing her “Eunice! You don’t need so many dang catalogs coming into this house!”

I’d have to mention the golf family, the buddies with whom Dad spent some of his very happiest hours walking the links. Dad loved golf, but when he talked to me about his games, it was clear that the camaraderie at the 19th hole was where it was at for him.

And then there’s the Branford Road Bunch. What to say about the families on the street where Mom and Dad raised us and lived for 45 years? Well, for starters, you didn’t have one mom and dad there. You had ten, all equally empowered to dole out punishment when you stepped out of line.  Second, you knew you were accepted in the neighborhood if, upon returning from vacation, there was either a ceramic toilet commode on your front lawn, or the insignia of your favorite sports team’s most hated rival affixed to your garage. The tight-knit friendships Dad shared with the Fitzs, Clines, Steins, Hookes, Wormuths and more were a model I’ve tried to recreate in my adult life.

It was inside that home on Branford Road where Dad impressed upon Sally, Larry, and me the values by which he lived: hard work, honesty, loyalty, and a sense of humor. He was our cheerleader, our taskmaster, our hero, and he showed his love with every action.

Dad’s love for us extended over time to his children’s partners, the three people who have showed my siblings and me unending support in the past weeks. And how could it not?

My husband Andrew said, “Go to Rochester for as long as you need, I’ll take care of everything at home.” Sal’s boyfriend Rich always managed to be exactly where we needed him to be, whenever we needed him, with a giant smile and a warm hug. Larry’s wife Shelley was actually Dad’s favorite daughter, since she didn’t sass him nearly as much as Sally and me. Her loving care for Dad throughout their relationship and especially in his final weeks defies all description.

Now if you take that overflowing fatherly love and multiply it by a million, you will start to have a sense of the scale of how Dad felt about his eight grandchildren. Your passions were his passions, your successes his successes, and if you faced a challenge, believe me, Grandpa felt it way worse than you did. Because I live in California, there was a risk that I could be disconnected from the lives of my brothers and sisters’ kids. But just like Dad was Google Maps before the technology was invented, he was a Facebook feed, keeping me informed through calls and letters every week about what the kids were up to.

Here is just a sample of what I have in a box of letters from Dad at home in Oakland:

Photos of Dad having his (slightly surreptitious) annual behind-the-scenes tour at one of Dan’s fireworks shows
Architectural drawings by Ryan, which Dad copied for me so he could keep the original
Letters telling me about Katie’s latest promotion in her budding travel industry career
Every article about every athletic achievement in every sport by Zachary
A slightly befuddled letter about Shannon’s senior year college theater showcase
Multiple editions of the college newspaper of which Tristan has been an editor

And when I got to Rochester a few weeks ago, there on Dad’s desk was an envelope full of our older daughter’s engineering drawings, and a program from our younger daughter’s 2015 summer ballet intensive. I assume that Sally and Larry got to discuss those at length with Dad.

He adored you just as much as you guys adored him.  But you knew that already.

I will close with a few hopelessly inadequate words about our mom. As much as our engineer Dad put all the systems and procedures in place for their lives to run smoothly, it was my kind, gentle, and generous mom who broke Dad’s heart wide open back in 1958 and made it possible for all the love inside to flow out. Theirs was a true partnership of complementary personalities, and together they created magic for their children and grandchildren. I pray that Dad’s magic will continue to surround Mom in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Thank you, Dad, for everything you’ve done for all of us. We love you.

Dad volunteered as a fireman in the town we lived for 45 years, and the Brighton Fire Department did him incredible honor on Monday. His casket rode in the rain on the back of Engine #5 all the way to church, then past his old station where the trucks were pulled out, lights flashing, and finally under a ladder truck into the cemetery. Nothing would have pleased him more.

I’m back home in California and going into hibernation for a little while, but want to thank everyone who has been so kind and supportive to me and my whole family in these past surreal six weeks. We are so very grateful.

                   
CommentsIs there a good time of day to call your mom? Hope she is ok. ... by Barbara johnsonLoved reading this and sharing in the moment with you in some ... by shiraThanks, A, for this and all your kind notes over the past ... by Nancy Davis KhoCount me IN. Would love to catch up. xoxox by Nancy Davis KhoFeels like it will be a long time but I know it will come ... by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 5 more...Related StoriesBaby TherapyVanity BitesA Lot of A Lot 

Baby Therapy

Our new across-the-street neighbors came over for a visit a couple of weeks ago, the night before I was due to take a redeye back East to visit my parents and help out with some medical issues they are facing. I was in the garden, whacking my worries out on some weeds, when they showed up at the top of our steps– the adorable three-year-old boy who likes to play with our old Thomas the Train set, and the dad carrying the ten-month old baby girl. The dad is a doctor, so I wasted no time in giving him a clipped summary.

“Oh my gosh,” he said, voice full of empathy. And then, in the same voice you’d use to offer someone an Advil or a bandaid: “Here, hold the baby for a minute.”

He pressed this sweet baby into my arms, a child who for some reason decided early on that she likes the lady across the street and always lets me hold her without a single squawk of protest when our families are together. This time was no different: she smiled her little dimpled smile at me, pulled my hair and grabbed my nose, cooed and stared at butterflies flying by. My shoulders dropped three inches in 14 seconds.

Cute Baby Holding. Has anyone looked into this as a therapy treatment for people with anxiety or depression? I mean, I’ve read about Cat Cafes (for the record: send me there if you want my anxieties to just finish me off all at once,) but this could be a lucrative new market opportunity.

I’m envisioning a snug little space with comfy cushions and cool drinks where people could go and just choose the most dimply, chubby, happy baby to sit on their laps and lose their cares to a chorus of chortles and baby noises. Customers could inhale the scent of baby scalps and admire the way babies creases in places where grownups generally don’t, like mid-calf and forearm. If a diaper change is required, or a baby starts to fuss, uniformed professionals would swoop in and place a new, clean, happy, friendly baby into the customer’s lap, and then set about restoring the original baby to that same state.

And it’ll be good for the babies, too. Think of the socialization and stimulation and adoration!

There is some hard science around this therapy approach. Back before I had kids, I read a study that measured how adults reacted when a baby entered the environment, by testing their physical reactions. For women (moms or not,) and for men who were dads, the reaction was identical: their heart rates sped up, their pupils widened, they were generally more alert and happier. (For men who were not dads, the opposite reaction took place: they basically shrank into themselves like turtles into a shell. Big surprise there.) I doubt this would work as well for women in the moms-of-toddlers years, but for midlife moms like me who harbor no further plans for parenthood, babies start to exert a renewed appeal.

Science or not, I just know it works. Last Saturday afternoon, we went with the neighbor family to the Alameda County Fair, and the baby rode along in a backpack. As we walked through the expanse of animal exhibits, funnel cakes stands, and Elvis-impersonating unicyclists, she put this little hand out toward me so she could hold my finger. We basically held hands all afternoon, except when she tried to soothe a new tooth by biting my finger with it. It was the best I’ve felt in weeks.

If only they had a term for this kind of baby therapy. Although maybe they do.

Grandparenthood.

Babies, I love you.

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