The Boys In The Band

Ladies. Girls. Young ladies. I know things.

I know you're going to think being on a reality show is the epitome of a career.

Hell, I wanted to be a semi-regular on "Eight is Enough." We all have our dreams.

You're going to listen to a guy who says he's not ready to be serious; what he actually means is, he wants you around to feed his bottomless ego until his dream girl--an anorexic Type A with a trust fund and tech job and parents who cover the rent--believes his gooey compliments and leaves you with these final words: "I hope we'll still be friends. I KNOW you and Andie/Lindsay/Megan will get along GREAT."

You're going to date or become enamored with or follow like a lost puppy this same guy who makes fun of the music that leads your life. You will dismiss his dismissiveness because you've been certain you are right about what you like, or because he's REALLY good looking and kisses well and might--MIGHT have a point about the same tunes you play at home, in the car, on your iPod. And down this slippery slope, you'll see what he means about that breezy California rock, and then he does something mean and horrible--takes up with his best friend's girlfriend while he's at an out-of-town party that didn't include you--and you sit in the middle of your 3rd floor rental, on the cold wooden floor, and say, Screw you, I STILL like The Eagles, you're stuck with The Replacements and R.E.M.; I like songs that are stories and I will definitely meet someone way better than you think you are, studying yourself in the mirror. Again.




I call my admiration a mild crush. You know, the kind you get on the lacrosse captain who smiles just so in the cafeteria, and you see him many years later, running a Fortune 500 company where he's well-liked and still so darned cute.

It began when I was 8 or 9 and my brothers were making fun of Mr. Sensitive, Jackson Browne, calling him The Hair. And one day after school I was smushed in the way back of a '68 VW and one of their friends said, "This is SO much better" and suddenly, a banjo and guitar wasn't the height of hokiness. Then there was a rare outing with Mother, Christmas shopping in Rockford, Illinois (NOTE: This does not, and never will, make me a Cheap Trick aficionado), and we--gasp--didn't have to wait to get home to eat--and this little steakhouse played oh oh oh oh, sweet darlin' and I remember looking in the bathroom mirror, scrubbing the ick of the mall off my hands, and thinking, Yes, love is what you'll get when you're about 18 and don't think ALL boys are mangy and out to get you in the back seat of their Camaros.

In between 6th and 8th grade, we had the classics: BTO. The Bay City Rollers. Sweet. Kiss. And like a comforting summer storm that sends you to the porch to watch the trees bend and maybe break, suddenly all of us junior highers knew every word to "Hotel California." We didn't know what "'69" meant, or why the knives were steely, but we surely got the image of mirrors on the ceiling. We were hit with lyrics we spent hours deciphering, an album cover that the more church-going mothers in our small town deemed demonlike, and... everything, all the time.,

I didn't dare ask for the album; according to my parents, we were dirt farmers, impossibly poor, and I was a little too thrilled flipping through those records at the store and the library. These were dangerous boys, probably smoking pot. Years later, when all the books about their foibles came out, pot was the mildest of their pasttimes.

That spring, my youngest brother, John George (truly his name), and I had this habit after school, before dinner: Without a word, we got on our bikes, rode to the other side of Plum River, watched the fish frisk near the surface, and talked about the very idea of ME leaving home. Through a little hard work and my father never hearing a higher-up saying "No," I miraculously found a prep school that would take me, the country mouse, into its mansion-turned-institute of higher learning. I was nervous and couldn't wait to leave; no one would notice me; I'd try out for the tennis team.

"Here," he said, his hand stuffed in the back pockets of his battered Levi's,"learn this." And he recited the lyrics he learned in a day and played them at home--he worked, he could afford luxuries--and I remember feeling kind of sad, like we'd never live in the same house again, and I wouldn't sleep on his bedroom floor when the tree outside my room scraped the window like a demon in a bad horror movie.

I hadn't heard it, didn't think I'd like it, but damn, it's still with me, 35+ years later. Johnny come lately.

Anyway. This weekend, I'm ignoring the New York publicist's recent e-mail--"LOL, I don't know ANYONE who does query letters, good LUCK!" and the 3rd anniversary of Former Flame's drop and roll at my old apartment, and the mean guy of 1990 who snarled at my tape collection and said, "Yeah, you WOULD like Don Henley," and learning, at long last, the real truth about 5 guys who made harmonies and musical stories and that indefinable IT into music you want to know and play on your next road trip.

What have we learned here? Besides NEVER audition for a role that is basically your life story, open to dippy interpretation where you will never sound like a Rhodes scholar?

Stand by your music, gals. Do NOT let the guy decide what you should hear. Unless, of course, he's sold a million records and real musicians want him onstage at the last encore and you are listening to Arcade Fire and The Strokes and that t-shirt band.

I had my brothers teaching me right from wrong. I found the band I will listen to until my hearing kicks--really found it and couldn't live without it--in a full-time way when I was 25 and Don Henley's solo career was the biggest break from Vanilla Ice and Whitney Houston and Pebbles and Amy Grant.

Brothers rarely lead you down the wrong musical path. Trust me. Though they'd never admit it, they're still the same, and know every word, every album, every chord.

Final words: Former Flame and I met in August, 1994, the same summer The Eagles regrouped. If I ever question why we weren't meant to be...anything...I just remember his, "I don't know that band." Which really meant he didn't know me, and he should stick to his basics: Enya. Whatever Pandora picks. Can't select your own soundtrack? Brother, no wonder you can't dance.

Gold.

AUCTION


Auctions were a genteel blood sport in my family. We had a working farm and an antique business. We needed both to keep the cars tuned, the house from falling apart, and Farmer Brown (really) from encroaching on quarter acre he proclaimed was HIS, not ours, the fancy city people. He could have bought and sold the rest of the county with the money he spent on that microscopic plat he produced in a dusty hot courthouse 4 or 5 times until the judge told him to find another hobby. We marked that barbed wire space with a load of rocks and one of my smart-aleck brothers wrote something about Beck Brown never getting over not getting his way and my granddad, a retired farmer, always muttered a real worker wouldn’t live in such a showy, split-level house in rural Illinois. I learned at a very early age you couldn’t always be friends with your neighbors.
Anyway, auctions: We empire builders got up at 5am most Saturdays; we had the Journal Standard marked with the shortest routes and best bets. A kindly matron who was called home at age 101 and didn’t entertain much likely had hidden treasures. You’d bid on a box of odds and ends and come home with expired S&H Green Stamps and a vacation post card and many hairpins. And sometimes, there it was: Gold. Real gold.

It was hotter than July, and the good pieces sold at a good clip. The right auctioneer paces the sale like a director coaxing the best performances out of his actors.
“Who’ll give me a dollar a dollar a five dollar bill? That little lady, RIGHT DOWN THERE.”
My mom had The Eye. She’d feign interest in painted-over junk, and just skim past the real loot. She had an audience and knew how to work it. My dad…well, he was The Distracter. How’s the wife and family? He’d ask, glancing at a rickety wardrobe that, 12 labor hours later, would bring in $1200 at the flea market. We paid $40, the highest, and only, bid. Excellent ROI.
When anyone asks where I get my story ideas and drama workshop courage, I don’t bring up Tennessee Williams or William Holden or Orson Welles or Elizabeth Taylor. Nope. The Eye and The Distracter. “American Pickers?” We started that movement when everyone wanted brand new sectionals on layaway. My parents’ drama skills could have run Neighborhood Playhouse, but that would have involved demonstrating patience with large groups of people who didn’t listen—why leave the familiar for more of the same?
It was a good antique summer. If they got home from the flea market before 9pm, it meant almost everything sold, and they had little to pack, and the truck moved faster, and I helped my dad unhitch the trailer before he settled into the kitchen I cleaned throughout the day, when I wasn’t reading with the stereo cranked way up. Once or twice they pulled up the driveway slowly, and I asked, “Only two pieces? For the whole day?” and there were grim talks about making it through the month, and I’d sit stock-still at the table, certain Beck Brown would send the moving van and we’d move…somewhere else and I’d never again wade in the Plum River that ran through the back of our woods. And a day or so later, there’d be a call: Someone changed his mind, could we bring those table and chairs to the summer house? No delivery fee? And we were safe, and someone else died, and we hunted and gathered the good stuff again.
But…gold. I was 15, and 5 years of early rides and loading and unloading and inhaling furniture stripper and knowing more than I should have about budgets and making do on very little felt just plain poor, not entrepreneurial. I was the only kid at the sales. I wanted to write in my room, to create a magazine, to shop for makeup. One more, Dad asked. He needed my help. He’d make it up to me. He’d let me drive. Did I want anyone to see me at the wheel of something out of “The Waltons?” I took the long route, down gravel roads, until Dad said, “Shift into fourth gear, Mario Andretti.”
Gold. We were, despite my lead foot pressure, late. We missed everything. The tall pine dresser, oak book case with original locks, a pie safe with handmade hinges: SOLD. We were just in time for the dregs. My Dad showed remarkable restraint, reminding me 10, 12 times of my brilliant travel plan. The bigger trucks with the Iowa and Wisconsin license plates were pulling out of the driveway. There’s something both sad and hopeful about an empty house. All the memories, and a new start for another family. The auctioneer was winding up.
“WHO’LL give me a dime, a quarter, ONE DOLLAR?” He held up a cigar box. “What’s in it? That’s another DOLLAR. THREE? SOLD. The young lady’s father, RIGHT DOWN THERE.”
I held it on my lap as Dad drove and said I really ought to study economics. The gas money, the circuitous route to nowhere, Mom’s upcoming lecture; that last was poor time management. I turned up the radio, rolled down the window. There’s really something quite pretty about a late summer Midwestern night with your Dad describing a wasted day in a tone that suggested he didn’t really mind how it turned out.
Gold…Mom was as pleased as we expected. This was, of course, mostly, or really, all my fault. A long day for Dad, who didn’t feel well a lot of the time; and—who cared what we drove? We had to work. It was contractual. How did I think new clothes appeared in my closet? Did I know they were doing this for me? I was suddenly an only child. The others had left home. Anything they did now was strictly for my amazing future. And I didn’t pick the fight Mom expected and just tapped the top of the box and no one said “Open it already.”
I wasn’t a master sulker, just knew how to exit a room with a low sigh and no backward glance and stay up as late as I could with the light on until someone asked me to shut it off.
I remember skimming Seventeen, tuning the radio to a station out of Chicago, and moving the box from the book shelf to my vanity table to my bed.
GOLD. Years later, I likened that moment to Jimmy Dean discovering oil in his inheritance from Mercedes McCambridge and laughing and lording his good fortune over Rock Hudson. There it was. Tiny pearls I later restrung into a bracelet. A "diamond" bracelet, something Joan Crawford would accept from a frightened suitor.
And a huge chunky wedding ring with ALPHA and OMEGA and someone’s initials.
I did what we never did after 11pm: I turned on the hall light and said something was in my room.
Dad sprinted up the stairs with a golf club. Mom followed, tying on a flowery homemade bathrobe.
I sat on my twin bed. Dad opened the closet, still brandishing a 9-iron.
And I opened one of those old school boxes with the ruler print and space for your name on top.
“You had good luck.” My father’s opinion. My mother’s agreement.
It was mine, all right, and I wore it on my right hand for years and then on a charm bracelet and it now sits in my jewelry box, waiting for—something.
SOLID gold. Could I buy a vacation house with the proceeds? The last appraisal suggested a number in the (very) low thousands. It is thick and solid and beautiful, an object of adoration and reminder of a good, great summer.
It is a three dollar lottery ticket that paid off on a wickedly warm and windy night, when the next auction could uncover a masterpiece that would allow my parents to laugh at the meanest man in Jo Daviess County who seemed to have it in for the uppity urban tribe whose sole reason for moving next door was to upset his apple cart.
It’s just amazing what you can find at auction. Next time you know about one, just go. And let me know what you uncover.

Book.

When the time seemed right to leave concrete and the cozy neighborhood I’d known and loved nearly 30 years, I picked a town with views you’d expect would take your breath away. The mountains and endless hiking paths would melt my urban nerves of steel. Serene thoughts would reveal a brilliance for living: Better stories, new friends who gardened and shared excess basil and zucchini; a book club. A clothesline, tech people who’d fix a laptop and wave away offers of recompense; an easy commute to the city, I'd been promised, a quick ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. Barges greeting me as I went to and from work. Mellow yellow on bikes; heck, I might even not mind tie-dye.
These are very good reasons to visit a place before you believe the landlord’s photo-shopped version of a charming studio that opened to a sunny private yard and a lemon tree and a virtual artist’s colony.
But I did it, and I’m glad I tried it, and Two Good Lessons were learned.
1. Ask for another set of photos; tell the landlord you need new ones NOW
2. Never, ever leave your moving truck alone
We left the truck wide open for 8 minutes. Someone’s thieving fists hit the mother lode: A first edition “Gone With The Wind,” signed copies from my favorite authors’ collections, newer bestsellers, and out-of-print children’s books that were in my family a really long time.
About books: You can never have too many of the right ones. Or even the laughingly bad bestsellers you read for fun at the beach.

Once or twice in a lifetime, you will read a review, a review you keep to yourself. You will find this book and feel you discovered the next Cheever or Fitzgerald. You will buy as many copies of Famous Successful Author’s work as possible and watch your family open identical packages on Christmas morning, 1985, and after the long walk in the woods, you will see everyone reading at about the same pace, not exactly thanking you because they’re all way more educated than you’ll ever be, but last time I checked, everyone had this book in his home.
As some feel about musicians and athletes, I see authors as life’s superstars. When Famous Successful Author hit the lecture tour years later, I arrived an hour early, took a front row seat, and just listened. Kind of like being in a room with Keith Richards: You want to soak it in, not gush over the stuff he’s heard forever.
He was taking questions. So I asked:
“Any advice for someone who wants to do—this?”
What a smile. Nice, east coast-y tone from obscure private colleges that would have laughed at my applications. And his answer is typed on an index card, written in a journal, quoted:
“Read, write, and live.”
__
17 years later, I ducked out of work early, armed with his latest collection of short stories. I was late for the show, and it wasn’t like I noisily settling into my cramped chair at the auditorium. Silence is nice in a movie theater or library or book signing. Really, I mean that. But those…looks of disdain as my handbag kind of tumbled and spilled what looked like everything I owned—honestly accidental. As the youngest of five, I mastered the innocent What was THAT? raised eyebrow expression in 4th grade. Then I stared at the stage and caught up, and shut up.
He’d finished his reading, and someone asked about editors who wanted to change your work, and I was thinking, Do you actually have an agent and contract? It was a little like worrying about hair and makeup after the audition but before you received a call-back. Editors. Right. Just pounding on your door. They don’t do a thing until you’ve received that little advance off which you’ll ostensibly live while you rewrite what you slaved over the last 3, 4 years. Editors take over when every last piece of the publishing puzzle has given you a green light. FSA’s reply was a little kinder than my inner monologue, something about doing as you’re told, or they might see something you missed, and my guess was, Editor Guy was probably a cub reporter in high school and the college paper assigned him sports statistics when THAT editor tired of his endless Meaning of Life essays.
And then we lined up like shoppers accepting free cashmere at the long desk. A girl about half my age shyly but determinedly placed every last one of his books in front of him. He signed them, one by one, and she told me which books her English teachers used for classroom work. How she related to the female characters. How her boyfriend(s) wined and dined her then disappeared, like some of the protagonists in FSA’s books.
I was last on line, after Editor Fellow was still in pursuit of a final answer to his question. I like to think the ushers showed him the exit.
I brought out FSA’a last 2 books. The ones that’d made quite the sound when they spilled with 6 lipsticks, 4 Chanel palettes, a hairbrush, and a Coach organizer that held nothing but stamps and blank calendar pages.
He asked if I’d like my name in his novels? Or just his?
I couldn’t just nod or say “Sure,” I had to say something.
“You’d never remember me, but, um, I, uh, met you in 1992, and you signed…your…book…and said one of your best friends was married to someone with my first name…” I know, rapier wit gets you noticed, stops the world, dims the lights, shines the spotlight on your pale, freckled face.
“Right. Tess. Where was that?”
“A, ah, junior college in the suburbs, gosh, where was that?” I sort of wished I was anywhere else.
He signed, I said thank you, and I slunk out the door. Even Editor Dude had a better interaction.
Back in the safety of my home, where no one knew I mentioned the suburbs or had a complete lack of junior college knowledge, I opened the title page.
For Tess. Once again, 17 years later. All the best. FSA.
Like I said. You will lose something important in a move.
Then you will throw yourself at someone’s mercy. You will hunt down first editions on Amazon and craigslist and call every last second-hand Midwestern book dealer and warn them not to resell what was stolen from you. They, of course, will stop what they are doing to bolt the doors for emergency inventory.
Six months later, FSA will see your e-mail in his OTHER Facebook Messgaes, and ask you to send what you recovered. You will wait and occasionally jot a note to OTHER in-box. And two weeks before you leave, you will track him, his publicist, practically anyone who ever heard his name, in pursuit of these books, signed or not.
And the day I left California—as I was debating with U-Haul about the contract and cost (an excellent conversation that cut $700 off the bill)—his name appeared in an e-mail.
Books signed and sent. On their way to Illinois. Included something REALLY special for your patience and follow-up.
Ah. Just as I’ve always known. I am patient--someone who does not panic or believes the sky is falling when everyone else is certain his or her world is crumbling and evaporating.
2100 miles later, I arrived at my brother’s place, kind of said “hello” to everyone, and found the box, and ripped it open.
He wasn’t kidding about the REALLY special.
It was a lovely piece of advice from Editor Guy…
It was a hardcover copy of his first and most successful book that was made into a less-than-stellar movie I never, ever miss when it airs on IFC. A book that was released ONLY in paperback. Authenticated, signed, sealed, delivered.
See? Something stolen can yield a really great gift. This is not a guide to life for Moving Truck Thieves. This is what happens when you let go of something and need it back in a better way.
What can I say besides thank you to him and his tenacious publicist?
Just this: I wrote to a few other authors to see if they, too, would sign what I replaced.
Only one actually did something. The most successful one, I might add. Not to brag.
So, again, FSA and Brilliant Publicist: Thank. You.
And as for the Mill Valley landlord and that freezing cold, overpriced, barely-legal sublet: You might want to cover those chipped black drain pipes with something more pleasing to the eye than dead grass. Just a suggestion.
I’m home and thriving and working on the next chapter.

Wedding Nots

We had a dress up box. A big trunk filled with hand-me-down dresses, frocks from a rich aunt, resale shop mistakes, anything you needed to win the Halloween contest or become someone else.

I was enamored of a powder-blue, ankle-length, full-skirted, strapless number with zippers and wires and lots of whispery layers. I wore it after dinner, before bedtime, reading in my own private suite, probably pretending I was Marlo Thomas or Liz Taylor or a Breck girl. The youngest of 5, it wasn't like I was unwilling to share; I just assumed if something was in the house, someone would use it, so I hid things: Junk jewelry, an occasional lipstick, a locked diary. An early hoarder, I wanted my domain to look like a movie set.

I was so used to tackle football with my brothers, and my sister smoothing over my messiness and precociousness, and my parents forgetting one more showed up when they figured 4 was enough, I never mastered giggly girl after-school playtime. Someone made me do it, and wasn't I arty and cultural, putting on Broadway shows and made-up plays. I zipped up the ice blue dress and actual heels that I walked in rather well, even though they were built for someone 10 years older. And Pam? Susie? Linda? asked if she could be The Bride. I'd be the bridesmaid. I thought that was second billing at best, and anyway, who wanted to get married? Word got around, and when I was invited to a birthday party, I was ordered to play nice, even if someone wanted me to put on a veil and pretend.

I love passing weddings, love walking past the church, love seeing those hopeful faces and teary ones, love the rice and laughter and bad bridesmaids dresses.

What I don't love is going to them.

I like the process, the planning, the options, the sheer terror of cleaning out a savings account earmarked for ONE DAY. Suckers. You could buy a house with that coin, but you'd rather twist initialed serviettes into rings and drive 6 or 7 caterers to the edge of sanity as you research the perfect lemon tang for the cupcakes your guests will take home in recycled boxes sealed with photo stickers of the happy couple.

It's a high honor being asked. I hold that invite and plan a wardrobe and tell my Manolos, "Some of you are going," and happily RSVP and then...Woody Allen reminds me, again, I'm unable to find a date on only six weeks' notice.

I finally found a way to weasel out of this delight. I send a regret. Simple. But, "You're missing out!" And suddenly I am the special guest star at every themed shower in the Midwest.

When the out-of-town maid of honor e-mails a list of demands, I do the polite thing. I block her. Actually, it's not too troublesome to send a list of liquor stores with a cost analysis sheet and Yelp ratings. I'm a BIG drinker, a sommelier, a cork expert. Hand me a bottle of bubbly and skip the homegrown hops sagas and everyone's happy.

And naturally something happened a few years ago that irks me still, kind of petty when there are things that should irritate me much more.

I'm helping the maid-of-honor, the one I've never met, answering one query after another about salsa clubs (doom) and menus. It's Friday, the fete is Saturday, and I STILL don't know how this happened, but suddenly I'm in charge of homemade chocolate chip cookies and bringing as much vino as I could carry.

You really lose me with vino. It's as mundane as calling pasta anything but pasta. As assuming I cover every inch of my food with garlic. As guessing my brothers are Vito, Guido, Guillermo.

I ignore her dopey giggle. I play the good sport. Put on makeup and cute black clothes and carry a huge tin of real chocolate chip cookies, the buttery kind Mom dropped by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.

A $15 cab fare, and I walk into a townhouse worth over a quarter mil and, like Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie," almost back out of the party.

These were Good Girls. The highly educated ones in Talbot's, devoid of makeup, bragging about their lasagna. The one they made with sauce from a jar. There's nothing to eat and I can't just dine on the dessert I brought, and everyone is swooning over salads layered with chives and cheese, over brie and crackers, over red AND white wine. Darn it all. I left my carefully chosen bottle at home.

You have a party, you have music. Am I alone in this? I timidily mention it. Bossy Maid turns on Harry Connick Jr. I should have kept my mouth shut.

So I'm hungry and my ears hurt and we've cleaned the green granite countertops and Bossy says it's time for FUN! Oh LAWD. Please. I will walk out that door if a stripper walks through it. Bossy's holding little white cards with...I think...How Well Do We Know The Bride trivia questions. I'm nodding off and thinking how much work I could be doing at home, Auntie Em, and these girls go WAY back to eastern schools and sororities and Sotheby's internships and they don't say their full names: I'm still me, but they are "Mare" and "Lou" and "Ally" and "Mel" and I wonder why I bother making work friends, they are always richer than I and can afford $20 cabs and $30 cover fees. They can, because poor saps like me bring them food.

And after the dullest, driest made-up game I lose 688-negative 8, someone notices I'm still there, apparently in mourning clothes amidst the long pastel dresses and skirts and sensible shoes, and asks what I think. Literally. What AM I thinking about marriage and The Bride and The Wedding?

"The flower and the gardener," I pull from my tired brain. "In every relationship, one blooms and blossoms, and one tends the buds and takes care of the dirt." A casual glance at my non-existent manicure, and, "You're a rose or the one pruning it." I swiped this show-stopper from 6,7 books about John Kennedy Jr's. Apparently every girl he kissed or dated or said hello to needed to write about his gardening skills. Poor guy. He didn't deserve his fate, or all those shirttail friends pontificating in magazines or on "Oprah," or putting up with that hippy-dippy Hannah chick who always looked messy even after a dozen stylists really tried.

You'd think I was introducing a new Botox formula or fertility treatment or perfect guy who wouldn't leave wet towels on the bathroom floor. Flower. Gardener. I am a genius. I have the floor. I am in that powdery blue dress, a doted-upon little lady with a bright future. I am about to pass out from low blood sugar.

And that was it. One question, one answer, a damned symposium. Then we're in a cab, headed to the absolute costliest dance hall in Chicago; that $100 I pulled from the ATM is dwindling. I'm supposed to chip in for every round when I'm not drinking anything. Bossy Lou is still directing us, a regular chief of staff, and I'd probably pick her to run a company or orphanage or residence hall or Republican National Convention.

Enough fun for one night. I pick up my black patent leather bag and thank everyone for a swell time and The Bride, the one who insisted I be her work representative at this gathering, says I am so much fun.

"Enjoy the cookies," I say, wondering where I can find food at 2am that isn't fried or covered in more cheese.

Back in my safe 3rd floor home, I wash off 10 layers of makeup and put on old pajamas and swear, on all that is good and holy, I will never, ever, involve myself in anything matrimonial. If, by some miracle, my college freshman beau reappears and declares he's figured out I was all right by him, 30-something years later, I will, of course, accept, with some terms and conditions:

We elope.
We do not use our friends and families to stock our kitchen.
We use our hard-earned bread to feed them.
We tell them not to bring a THING.
We play 1000 of our favorite songs so everyone can dance till they drop.
We send them home with cookies I've assembled that morning.

And I will find something that vaguely resembles that perfect party dress.

One Week

From acts rooted in hatred and ignorance and blindness, what can we learn?

There is much to learn about a mind that breaks into a weapon of hate and violence and massacre. This is the knowledge that, in my innocent hopefulness, will lead to understanding how someone in such loneliness and agony can ruin a community and a wall of love in 15 minutes or less.

I couldn't sleep last Thursday. Around 4a.m., I e-mailed work: I was running a high temperature and fighting a migraine that felt like a coffee grinder was dissolving my forehead and the base of my neck into sawdust. An uneasiness put me to sleep at 5:30, the TV tuned to a news channel. I awoke at 10a.m. and put on the coffee and glanced again at the wide screen.

It's amazing how you can convince yourself what you're seeing is a mistake, an error, poor reporting. And then the images of a serpentine rope of beautiful brave children led by someone braver than anyone you'll meet in your lifetime plays and replays, and a young beautiful brunette cries into her cell phone, and you know this time, there is no triage or minor injuries.

In the words of Jim McKay in 1972: "They're all gone."

Babies. Tiny, innocent tykes on a Friday, Christmas so close they can feel it, and a maniac with guns no one should even manufacture destroys every hope and dream their parents planned the minute the stick turned blue.

There are too many heartbreaks to fill this post, but the psychologist who discovered 6 children in his driveway who escaped the horrors through luck or pluck and took them in and fed them juice and found their parents...the exquisitely lovely 27-year-old teacher who hid HER kids and faced down that demented warrior and paid with her life...the no-nonsense principal who rushed that demon and, too, paid dearly...I love all of you and wish there was something I could do for you and your families.

The NRA, the Bullies With The Bullets: You don't scare us anymore. YOU should be afraid of US. We have your swing states. Chuck Heston's cold dead hand is just that. We are stronger than you. Use your power for good, not evil. Do us a favor and disband and find better hobbies than polishing your assault weapons. Deer hunt if that makes you a sportsman.

President Obama. You care. You spoke like a Commander in Chief. You can fix this with an emergency bill. Those children draped on you like a favorite uncle after Sunday's memorial service showed, again, it takes a damned country to make a community. Their trusting faces show they believe you will fix this.

We can grieve and mourn and plant stuffed animals on that horrific site for years. We can also storm the the lawmaker's offices and demand the changes.

And you parents teaching your children to handle a gun: Shame on you. Read them a book. Take them for a hike. Bore them with leaf patterns and sumac formations and trail rides. Redirect their interest from those vile, violent video games to the peacefulness of a public library, Sunday school, assembling a family meal. Fill their minds with good manners, community service, giving one wrapped birthday and one wrapped holiday present to a child who has nothing. Stop the 1/2 birthday party nonsense--donate the money to a literacy program. Keep your children far, far away from sass-talking reality show "stars" who've never done an honest days' work. Heck, turn on "The Waltons" and watch their angst turn to calm. Open a board game. Turn up U2 and put on a variety show. Who cares if you look mildly clumsy bopping around the living room? You're a unit and not concerned about the neighbors shaking their heads over that creative family next door.

I hold no sympathy for a psychotic 20-year-old. I do hold out hope mental illness is not treated like leprosy and recognized as a genuine medical condition, replete with medicine and therapy and healing.

And while the shooter's mother had no business making sharp-shooting her hobby of choice, let's take a moment to ask, Where was Dad? He'd left a mere 3 years before, with the promise that his former wife would never work again. What have we heard from or about him? That criminal was his kid too. His job, and new wife, and new life, kept him mighty busy. Yet somehow all the responsibility fell on a woman with her own set of issues.

I can blame the gun manufacturers, the ammo shops that didn't bat an eye at a shifty kid amping up on magazines, a mother who didn't quite teach her child well.

Boys still need their dads. Shame on Mr. Lanza. Shame on anyone who ignored the hints and signals that could have stopped the worst 1/4 hour in our lifetimes and left us with 26 treasures who wanted to learn and teach.

Please write a check for any amount you can live without, and send it here:

Emilie Parker Memorial
PO Box 12751
Ogden, UT 84412-2751

Hold your loved ones closer than ever. Be aware of anyone in pain or agony.

And really, REALLY think long and hard when any kind of gun fascinates you for more than the length of an average popular song. There's a whole interesting world out there. Picture and embrace it.

Another Year

One year ago, I dusted off the counterfeit wonder of living in a new town: It sucked, and nothing happened in it, and its noxious pretensiousness had me plotting my escape, 2 months after my arrival. In particular, one laid back dooood sitting like royalty at a prime table--a doood who'd served the Kennedys ages ago, that was his fairytail and he was sticking to it--made me despise everything about Marin.

If I learned more than I already knew, which really wasn't all that much, it is that I am not terribly adaptable. I need to walk out the door and see people, not deer and scrambling skunks. And these people don't need to talk to me, a wave will do, because you can dress it up all you want, but seriously---I will never, ever be interested in your rescue pitbull stories.

And now a big birthday is closing in, and with all this acquired wisdom from living in a town without pity--or good taste, decent food, a handy transportation system--I can tell you how it will turn out if you do the exact opposite of everything I've done.

You will be in your 20s a scant 10 years. Get as much education as you can. Straight A's will do--you paid for the class, get the the most out of it. Don't show off in class. Don't talk back to your teacher. Be quiet, take notes, don't text, sit next to a non-friend so you can escape that high school comfort zone AND pay attention in class. Dress like a student, not a pole-dancing vamp or slovenly jock who couldn't find a clean sock at a shoe store. Spend your summers working demeaning, underpaid, undervalued, demanding jobs. Find them online. Beg to be hired. Stop using your parent's connections. Waiting tables will prepare you for the courtroom, the classroom, the investment bank, the stage. Bank this money. Then forget it. Graduate. Take a week off. Stop taking money from your parents. Live on what you make from the job you found through all those restaurant connections. You might want to live alone. Save your coin. Go out as much as you can. Sleep with whomever you like; you're not ready to be in a committed relationship until you're....

30. Everyone's pairing up. Don't be a rebel, or your friends will set you up with someone just as ambivalent as you. And if you're really desperate, go to match.com, align on paper, bleach those red flags if he/she's already been through a bad first marriage because YOU'RE different, and you want the same things--what better way to prove this theory than sorting it out online? So you want to be with someone who makes your toes curl and knows how to cut a rug and makes you laugh at inside jokes and cranks the stereo to your college soundtrack. Be serious. Matrimony is a serious business. You've had your fun. Review the 401K, ask for a raise, stay on that fast track. Then, when you're finally getting along, around the 4th anniversary, you face facts: You don't like each other. You were better off e-mailing and not really meeting. One of you will be the first to make the big change...and the other will be left behind, wondering how online dating would dare to match you with someone now in control of your savings and income and pension. When one of you moves out, you'll want to nail the first person who smiles at you. You'll want to leave a trail of hearts more fractured than yours. Don't do that. Just because you went into this clinically, not romantically, please don't punish the kind people who really DO like you. Stay home, seek therapy, assign a 9-month solitary sojourn. Then dip your toes in the dating pool. Then sleep with as many people as you can until....

You're 40, and the idea of writing a will isn't a hazy maybe. If your marriage is intact, you probably have a child or two. Read to them until they tell you they can go to sleep on their own. Keep them off bad movies and reality shows. Take them for walks. Don't buy them a lot of stuff. Take them camping; leave the help at home. They should know everything that happened in the 1900s. Keep them far, far away from any kind of singing competition shows. Teach them as much as you can about politics. Create games of Name That Senator and Know Your Judicial System over the dinner table. Do not make them befriend your business associate's children. Make them clean their rooms and do the laundry and cook a few meals. The best marriage I ever saw was one in which everyone spent Sundays cleaning the back yard. Seriously, picking up sticks and carting them off in the wheelbarrow creates a sense of community within a family. And there's a special place in heaven if you and your children plan a garden.

Save more than you spend. Tip big. Cook at home. Don't be afraid to demonstrate the love you feel. Better to be a silly sentimental fop than a cold coiled silent type, absently patting the ones who love you back. Ignore ignorance. Donate winter coats to those in need.

And there is nothing painful in life that listening to The Beatles won't fix.

Happy birthday to you.

The Next Voice

After the escape, you count and list the millions of things you missed and craved. Closet space? I have 6 now. One for black attire, the other, well, I got a little too California and tried colors and one print Lake Michigan would welcome with a dainty splash...and I keep that door shut; there's a place for coats, linens, cleaning supplies, products. You know, the stuff that keeps me young. Serum, a lady's best friend. A basket filled with French milled soap.
And there is room for ME again, without the loudest, clumsiest, barking-est landlady in Swill Valley. Things dropped at specific times: Namely, my days off, with an 8am start time, until the morning I yelled through the ceiling: "IS IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO MAKE A LITTLE MORE NOISE?" She and her toadie friends tiptoed to their hiking trip--the height of sociality--and doors shut gently, and the trilling landline didn't shove me farther under the covers with the growy, "HELLO? OH, how ARE you? Nothing. Oh, I'm fine. I just miss my Evan..." and I'd plug in Spotify and wish I were safe at home, Auntie Em. My Evan. He wasn't yours. He'd divorced you and duked it out with you over the house until his sad demise, your moment to shine and garner sympathy and play the merry widow. When this true story emerged--so my neighbors were pitbull-loving, fleece-covered, green tea-swilling slow walkers, but they were useful in pointing out I was being rooked by a complete kook--how I seethed. "My Evan." You weren't widowed. You were left. Revisionist history. No wonder you wanted to rent to someone 2100 miles away, someone who'd have no reason to doubt your happily married stories. When I told her I wanted to live around normal people who didn't eat sprouts like candy yet still looked sedentary and morose, she wished me good energy. Kind of like telling the person you just robbed to have a nice life.

So. I'm home, and, after couch-hopping for 3 weeks--a few sunny, friendly days on the North Shore, a quartet with my brother and his family, a scary 8 days with a doper (really, I didn't know anyone here still did that), and 7 nights with a lovely, normal, welcoming family--I moved in, went to Goodwill, covered a couch, started work, and took stock of everything I didn't do for 12 months:

I didn't see a movie in a theater
I didn't have any second dates
I didn't see the reason for going on the first ones
I didn't have more than 2 decent meals out
I didn't see my family
I didn't see one concert

Doing so little can add to the bank account or the wardrobe; it's an even split. 2 clothes closets, right? I'd add to the coffers and start living, a plan that lasted 7 hours. One of my favorite musicians was on his way. Last time I'm pretty sure I saw him do...something...from our hideous seats. This time, I'd spend and not pass out when I clicked CONFIRM.

I took one of my oldest friends, a small thank-you for letting me stay in the dreamiest guestroom filled with books and working cable (Hilda, Ex Landlady, cut the cable bill because My Evan didn't leave her very much, yeah, ex-husbands typically name ex-wives their sole heir) and windows not covered in dirt and spiders.

You know you're in for a good time when, over a quick dinner, "Thunder Road" plays and yes, summer will happen again and your 20s were awfully fun and you remember the sweetest things boys in muscle cars ever said to you. High on anticipation and The Boss, we took our seats and, about 3 minutes later, there stood Jackson Browne. Lanky, handsome, happy. Good shirt and jeans. And wasn't he sweet, introducing the opening act? My 5th JB show, and he's never named anyone who played before him.

And this young girl--if 31 is considered a girl--stood, looking like a recent Columbia College Creative Writing grad, wearing a crunchy second-hand black dress and boots that made her resemble a linebacker, picked up a violin and oh no. Mellencamp convinced too many he was a creative genius, employing a violinist to cover up his lack of originality or sheer meanness. Anyway, Sad Sack went on and ON about her bluegrass roots. Wow. 4 chords and notes that tumble. And that voice. Imagine a 3rd-rate Joni Mitchell wannabe with too much Natalie Merchant and a heavy dose of Norah Jones and you are really, REALLY happy she'll only play 3, 4 songs because we're here to see someone who's meant something for, oh, 40 years, right?

The audience lapped it up like caviar at a free benefit. "YOU ROCK!" "WE LOVE YOU!"

I haven't felt like this since the first time WXRT tripped over the studio equipment, spinning Liz Phair's debut, declaring her The One. They do that a lot for anyone local because how easy is it to get them live?

I learned tolerance in a chilly, unfriendly, manic depressive city because there really wasn't anything else to do. But this--the bowing to her brother who mastered Guitar 101, the kneeling, the preening, the original compositions about guys who left her hanging--I just did something I usually reprimand: I chatted with my friend. How were the kids? I LOVE being back in Chicago. Job's okay, but I'm still going to write--and this dirge of a guy asked me, "Are you going to talk through the whole show?"

My friend said, "Only until the concert starts."

Sad Sack, whom the audience was cheering like they knew good music--well, once upon a time they did, they were there for Mr. Browne--was gone. And the REAL show started, and yeah, he's always a little slow at the start, but like a healthy racehorse, builds to a great finish, and we're perfectly fine, when he demanded Sad Sack and her troupe "Help him out."

One time, sort of okay. Suddenly Sad Sack and Company were his longtime collaborators, the people who got him there, forget The Eagles and JD Souther and anyone who accompanied him, these twits who weren't even born when "Running on Empty" was on every car radio were his pride and joy. And Sad Sack, with those dumb bangs and stupidly clumsy dance moves and average--I'm being really generous here--musical skills took over like an assistant secretary usurping a tenured CEO (I know, mixed metaphor, but I've never seen such entitlement).

And he wasn't playing for us. Oh no. Sad Sack had his eyes. He didn't need anyone else. I asked my friend if I was imagining this. No, she was a little surprised too. Such devotion for so little. I'd get it if she really did have IT.

Despite Sadness in the wings, ready to be called upon, it was a rocking good show. You have to be a little dead in the heart and head if "Doctor My Eyes" doesn't take you back to a warm fun night or remind you even extremely rich, talented, handsome guys have hardships.

And then I had to figure out why Sad Sack bothered me so. Okay, apparently she's the Next Big Thing and probably the record company made some deal with Mr. Browne so he wouldn't have to travel alone and fiddlers need work too, and once you are the correct demographic, that tiny slice of individuality some marketing genius researches and brands, and your chubby brother makes for a cute story, well, soon, you're being shoved down our throats and collecting Grammies and not always remembering to thank the guy who gave you a ton of screen time.

So I stewed and wondered at work today, and wouldn't you know, one totally cool woman my age who wasn't mispronouncing my last name or asking about my background decided we should dish and try some shades and I had to tell someone about last night.

"Ick," she said. "I know who that is. My husband made me see her TWICE. I couldn't listen to that voice. And it was so weird, how every other person was just wowed by her." She texted her husband. Apparently he wept, missing Sad Sack, not making The Trifecta.

Okay, I could knock and berate her and promise you'll be hearing a whole lot about her in the next year; I'm pretty good at predicting who's going to make it big, deserved or not. We're stuck with Arcade Fire and Adele; get used to it. Sad Sack is the next Sheryl Crow, minus the nuance, talent, affecting songwriting, decent voice, true love of music. Sad Sack is the next generation's Natalie Merchant, with the inate gift of convincing people that, by incorporating something terribly unique for our times--bluegrass and folk with what I'm pretty sure is a form of classic rock--she's doing us a favor. Sad Sack's parents beamed when she sang along to the radio and said, "You're really gifted!" and subjected their friends to cute backyard performances. Her utter belief in her own greatness, witnessed when she shook her arms in the victory pose when someone shrieked, "WE LOVE YOU, SAD SACK!" got her this far, and will keep her on top way too long.

I don't buy or listen to new bands, haven't in years. I don't intend to break the streak.

And as for Mr. Browne: You've still got it. But Sad Sack touched some nerve in you. You might thing you're mentoring, but we, watching from the main floor last night, had a couple of ideas.

You're either revisiting your youth with someone young and hopeful, or doing more than rehearsing on that tour bus.

Either way--grow up.