Kids

Why Go?

/ Deb / Leave a comment

You might reasonably deduce that this post is about that Pearl Jam song. It’s not, or at least not entirely. It’s a fair assumption, though, as “Why Go” has endured as one of my favorite PJ songs, and I’ve certainly written about it before. It has been known to get me out of a grumpy mood, and sometimes it even serves as life advice (don’t be another clone). I’m still on a post-Pearl Jam high, having seen them a while back at the Bourbon & Beyond Festival in Louisville, where, yes, they did play “Why Go”, and I loved it and belted out those lyrics at the top of my lungs.

But what I am really asking is — why do we go to concerts? And perhaps more aptly, why do we go to see the same band, over and over? What compels us to travel to see a band that we have seen dozens of times, to hear songs that we have heard hundreds of times? I’ve often faced that question, and I’m afraid that I rarely have an eloquent answer.

I once read an article that theorized that the songs are like old friends. We get emotional when we hear these songs, in the same way that we get emotional when we see a long lost friend. I don’t know that I could explain it any better than that.

At least for me, favorite bands and songs serve as a touchstone. They mark my progress through life. I’ve heard all of the old Pearl Jam stuff in concert dozens of times over the past 30 years, but of course I’m never the same person as the first time I saw them on that overcast day at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds in 1992. Fresh out of college and starting law school in a month, I was a fan of plans, certainty, and structure. I wouldn’t realize until years later that all the good stuff comes from the things in between the plans. But that naive young woman was right about one thing that day — I knew that I had found my people.

I’ve grown up with these guys, with these songs. They are now as much a part of me as any old friend. That’s what keeps me coming back to see them, year in and year out. And for people who have entered our life midstream, these bands and songs become part of how they see us. Nowhere is this more true than with our kids, who grew up hearing these songs on kitchen playlists and road trips. The great thing about kids is that they might think we are crazy for our fandom, but they love us anyway.

The morning after the Louisville show, as we were heading to breakfast, my daughter texted me from her college town across the country. She said that she had been in a friend’s car the night before, on their way to get pizza, and Pearl Jam’s “Daughter” came on the radio, and it made her think of me. My nose started to sting and my eyes welled with tears as I texted her back, telling her that Pearl Jam had actually opened with “Daughter” the night before.

I didn’t ask her what time it was that she heard “Daughter” in the car on her way to dinner in Colorado, but I sure like to think that it happened at the exact same time that Pearl Jam took the stage and played it in Louisville.

Cupcake Love

/ Deb / Leave a comment

I walked in to pick up my daughter’s graduation cupcakes, for a grad party that has now been postponed due to Covid. Over the creaking of old wooden floors, I heard Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” playing faintly from speakers in the hallway. Well played, universe.

This is the song that, when she first started listening to Taylor Swift, compelled me to have one of those mom moments and remind her, “Just remember, you never need a boy to rescue you or make you happy”. She stopped singing, looked at me, deadpan, and said, “Mom, I know that. It’s just a song”. She was right, of course — always wise beyond her years.

And this is the song that, when we saw Taylor Swift in concert a few years after that, she identified as the song she really wanted to hear. (This is a pre-concert discussion that I always make my fellow concert-goers have — What song do you really want to hear? What song will be the opener? What song do you really not want to hear?)

My daughter had said, “Oh, it’s an old song and she probably won’t play it”. But when Taylor did play it, my girl flashed me a sweet smile — she had gotten her Concert Moment, something that everyone deserves, especially when it’s their first concert.

And this song exists on our collaborative Cabin Mix, and of course on the Graduation/Colorado Mix that I had prepared for the grad party. It sits alongside many other significant songs from my daughter’s childhood, as well as some Colorado-related songs to celebrate her next adventure. (And apparently John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” is going to be a trigger song for me from now on….as I discovered on the way to Costco the other day).

Of course, there was really no way that “Love Story” would not make it onto that mix — it’s just one of my girl’s songs. And as she heads out into the world, I love knowing that it will show up for me from time to time, reminding me of the girl she once was, and the incredible young woman she now is, and it will always make me smile.

Passing Notes with Lenny

/ Deb / 1 Comment

I started packing my daughter’s lunch again this year. Somewhere around middle school, my kids had taken over primary responsibility for packing their lunches. But now my son is away at college, it’s my daughter’s senior year and she’s returned to school after 18 months of remote learning, and I am keenly aware of the fact that we soon will be empty-nesters. So packing her lunch just feels right.

We’ve settled in to a nice morning routine. I pack her lunch, we chat about our upcoming day, and I help her get out the door to school. Taking a page from my dad’s playbook, sometimes I’ll go out and warm up her car or scrape her windows.

Yesterday morning we were listening to KEXP over cantaloupe, and an old Lenny Kravitz song came on. Our day was now off to a great start! I thanked John Richards out loud, turned it up, and told my daughter of my Lenny memories. In what must have been my sophomore year in college, Lenny had just released his first album and was doing a publicity tour. He was doing an autograph session at Tower Records on The Ave of the University District in Seattle, barely a block from our apartment. My bestie/roommate was the driving force in getting us there, as she owned the album. There was a line that snaked along the aisles, and there he sat, at the rear of the store under a poster, oozing coolness. When it was our turn, we mumbled hello, Lenny signed her cassette tape, and we went on about our day, which likely included a muffin at Muffin Break, or a slice at Pag’s. Years later, I saw Lenny Kravitz in concert at the Paramount with my sister, and he was just as fabulous as I wanted him to be. I recall that he did a Jesus pose at center stage (which you absolutely should always do if you are a rock star), and the crowd went wild. My daughter chuckled at the story, and off she went.

I recently started my annual cleanout/purge/re-organize effort. I’ve previously admitted that I am a sentimental hoarder, and I have boxes of things from my childhood and young adult life. But I’m trying to be more intentional about what I save, so it was time to go through a bin of old high school items and see what could go. I had a box of old notes from friends that made for a hilarious afternoon of reading about things I had forgotten (oh, the drama of the senior year Homecoming dance! How on earth did we ever make it through?). Most were mundane day-to-day musings about lunch plans and classroom events, prompting my daughter to ask, “wait, did you write these during class?” I said of course we did (duh), and when you saw your friend in the hallway between classes, you would pass the note to them. It was the 1980’s version of texting, before anyone could envision that something like text messages would ever exist.

With my hoarding habit exposed, I was surprised when my daughter observed that it was cool that I have these physical items as a snapshot of my life back then. Her communications with her friends exist only in the ether of electronic messages, and there will be no box for her to sit and go through someday with her daughter on a rainy afternoon. I told her that she can always change that, and write a note or letter to her friends. Maybe she will.

I texted with my friend yesterday, asking if she remembered the Lenny autograph session (she did), but I forgot to ask if she still has the tape. I hope she does. I still buy physical copies of albums, and I have all of my old vinyl, CD, and cassette tapes. After going through the box of high school things, I tossed all of the notes from old boyfriends, but I ended up keeping the ones from my friends. And OF COURSE I have a box of letters from my college days — hometown news from my parents and younger sisters — that I will never get rid of. So look out, college kids and soon-to-be college kids who are related to me…..old school letters are coming your way.

With all of this nostalgia for pen and paper rattling in my head, I wrote a note to my daughter in our old write-and-pass-back journal from years ago. In honor of the tradition of high school note writing, I penned my first new entry with “W/B”, but of course was careful to include a notation to her, explaining that this means “write back”. And she did.