Life at 33 1/3 RPM

This is what is the MP3 set to repeat on the IPod shuffle: We're Going to Be Friends, The White Stripes, White Blood Cells, 2002

And so we jump –

We leap, we fling ourselves at the new school year. 

Our shoes are a bit too new.  The backs of our heels are horribly chafed.    Our smiles are bright and earnest and expel more energy than is wise.  This isn’t a sprint, this new school year, oh no, it is a marathon and we are going to need to pace ourselves.  But right now we are full of nervous energy. We take that first metaphorical lap way too fast.   We say “Hi” to everyone.  We are exhaustingly likeable. .  My tie is cinched up too tight.  The Big One’s Hello Kitty lunchbox is blindingly white.  There is no way that we will be able to keep this pace up.

And so, on this first day of school, out on the playground at that very first recess, we run into each other, the Big One and I.  She is with her kindergarten class.  I am attempting to steer a giant amoeba of second graders away from physical and psychological injury. 

“Anyone up for four square?” I gamely call out, tossing out a giant rubber playground ball.   There are no takers.  Soccer is what they want to play and every  one of them streaks towards one innocent soccer ball out on the playground.  Can we get through this first recess without a skinned knee or anyone feeling left out?

“Whoa!” I say, instinctively covering my head as two sets of little legs tie up, sending their respective bodies cart-wheeling through the air and then onto asphalt.  Incredibly, the little bodies bounce up.  Again they begin chasing the ball.  They radiate enough energy to power a breakaway Russian state.

“Papa!” says the Big One.  I jump and turn and look down, whiplashed by the cognitive shift.  It is the Big One and, next to the second graders, she doesn’t look so big.   She looks incredibly little. Her pigtails are lopsided.  Her skirt is riding up in the back.  She grabs onto my leg.  She hangs from me like a koala starving for eucalyptus, testing my new belt’s ability to remain around my waist.

The new school year melts away.  It is summer again and I am back to my role as papa.  Every ounce of my being wants to right her crooked pigtails.  I fight a pathological need to adjust her skirt and to spit on my thumb and rub at cookie grime that has collected around her mouth.    How will she make friends looking like this?  Social isolation seems inevitable. 

“Hey,” I say.

“That’s Joe,” says the Big One, she is pointing to a group of kids.  “He has orange hair and guess what.  He can walk and hula hoop at the same time.”

“You know I’m working, right? “  I say.    I’m being a teacher right now.  O.K.? You get that, right?”

The Big One looks at me, squinting out of the corner of her eyes.  I have previously seen her do this while contemplating other inexplicable and improbable adult phenomena such as facial hair and news radio.

Just then the soccer ball bounces up and over the fence.  It bounces among cars that are looking out for Slow Children.  The children groan.

“Freeze!” I yell at a dangerously helpful second grader.   I point at him and hold him in place with a Jedi force known only to teachers, willing him to cease in his quest to chase balls.  It is like asking a golden retriever to heel at a tennis game.  I must act quickly.

“I’ve got to go,” I say to the Big One, unsuccessfully rubbing at her mouth grime.   “Look, there goes Joe.  Wow! Look at him go!”

And so the Big One is off.  She is chasing down a new friend from the first day.   As a father, I want to watch her go and ache with nostalgia and love her for who she is and who she will be.  I want to watch her as she runs off on her own.   But today I am a teacher first.  On this first day of school I have no such luxury.   The second grade only has a half hour for recess, a lot of nervous energy to expel; the soccer ball is bouncing away.

So this is the Little One’s pick of the week, Blue Train , All Aboard the Blue Train, Johnny Cash, 1962, vintage vinyl

So we turn off of South Shore Drive and coast up onto the bike path. We pause for a moment on top of the hill. Me, my bike, a bike trailer stuffed full of children and enough provisions to survive a plane crash into the Andes; we all look down the hill onto a summertime gushing Lake Michigan complete with puffy clouds skimming a backdrop of Midwest blue.

There is a week before the start of a new school year. It is a whole week before I return to my job as a teacher and the Big One and the Little One return to school.

Summer is not over! I proclaim it loudly. I stomp my feet. Yes, she has told me she wants to be just friends. Sure, she introduced me to her sister, Autumn, who is totally nice.

But Autumn is not Summer.

In the morning, we sleep in. For breakfast, we have eggs and toast and when the toast is gone, we have more toast. We are meeting friends at the park and I have enough PBJs in a gallon ziploc for everyone and our friends have promised to bring cheese curds and juice boxes. But now, at this moment, the children and I are straddling the peak of a hill. We are potential energy about to go kinetic.

I squeeze down hard onto my handbrake. There is no way that I am letting go. Not now. The Little One is singing Blue Train by Johnny Cash but he only knows part of the chorus:

“Gonna ride a Blue Train, Gonna ride a Blue Train.”

And he sings this part over and over, louder and louder and I am totally proud of him even though he is more expressing an alliance with Thomas the Tank Engine than with the Man in Black.

The Little One has outlasted his sister who tried unsuccessfully to shout him down with a loud and speedpunk cover of YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE! and this victory has made him feel raucous and powerful.

Despite the racket, or because of it, the Big One is still in good spirits. At this moment, we are atop a summer time hill, full of life and fun. She is ready to go. She is full steam ahead.

“Come on, Papa!” she shouts.

I am the only one clinging desperately to the brake which is starting to slip and squeak. The bike is inching forward and the bike trailer and its contents will no longer be prevented from hurtling down this precipice. The inevitable can only be held back for so long.

“Come on!”

I listen to the Big One. I release the brake. I crank forward, hard, not coasting but thrilling down the hill like the X-games answer to attachment parenting. We’re ridin’ the blue train! We are kinetic!

So this is what my guitar wants to play before I fall headlong into a sentimental flashback: California Stars, words by Woody Guthrie, music by Billy Bragg and Wilco.

Tonight is your birthday salon. We have enticed our friends to come over with promises of veggie lasagna, carrot cake and wine. In exchange, everyone must perform. It is your house party, your artist salon, a hoe down in the Brew Town. So we all must bow down to your birthday bossiness.

After a piano performance from my beautiful and talented comrade and wife (Act I), Diego’s parents rocked the mike with full-on bomba and zampoña (see Act II). An amazing puppet show followed (Act III).

(Last weekend, I was going to write about the puppet show (ie Act III) but I gave up coffee. I stumbled around muttering to myself and generally was a nuisance to my nuclear and extended family, and the whole of Bay View. At one point I woke up from a nap just so I could take another nap. That’s right fan(s) of Life at 33 1/3 rpm (Hi Mom!), no java elixir, no blog. Sorry puppeteers. Your show really was great!

Now, this weekend I have given up drinking green tea. I took up green tea to give my mouth something to do when it wasn’t drinking coffee. Now I have given up green tea because my mouth is busy having a great big smile because I am drinking coffee again. This is a good time to say…)

Now it is my turn to perform for my beautiful and talented wife’s birthday salon. I step up to the mike and say “check check” which sounds terribly official. It feels so good that I say, “Hello Milwaukee!” really loud like it’s Summer Fest. I get some squeaky feedback and everyone groans and covers their ears.

“Hello Milwaukee!” I say again a bit more softly this time, hoping, since this is suppose to be a birthday present, that my performance improves. I start strumming.

“This is for my wife,” I say. “It’s about the place where we first met. The place where our children were born.” I go around the chord cycle once, from the one to the five, to the four and then back to the one. How many great songs have been written with this magic chord progression. Woody Guthrie made a career from it.

I open my mouth to sing but I feel myself floating back to San Francisco, back to that that night that we sat on the bumper of my pickup, on a cliff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the city lights. We ate chicken and drank Tecate beer with wedges of lime shoved in the can.

Earlier we had been on the phone. There was this terrible silence, this pause, a terrible hesitation….

And…

And…

Next week our hero falls headlong into Wilco-Gutherie inspired sentimental reverie.

Act II

My beautiful wife has finished up playing Turn Me On on the piano for her DIY birthday artist salon party. Now the party is at a crossroads. Are our friends willing to perform with only the promise of veggie lasagna and good beer? They have eaten our lasagna. They are drinking our beer. Is this when they say goodnight? I consider rushing the stage with the only family-friendly joke I can remember (“What’s brown and sticky?” Answer “A stick.”) when seven-week old Diego is thrust into my arms and his mama strides purposely to the other end of our living room. This is where a microphone on a mike stand has been plugged into a guitar amplifier. I wonder if this is sufficient to make it a “stage.” One only has to stand behind the mike to realize that it does command attention. Is it the amplification that makes it a stage? Or is a “stage” just a conceit of the socially-constructed false dichotomy of entertainer/ entertainee that perpetuates a capitalist hegemony over our “freetime”.

Diego and I go in search of someone willing to hear out this rant. Perhaps it has potential for my blog. All I would need is a song (I haven’t used Thelonious Monk in a long time) and a cute kid’s story and then presto, Blog Magic. I look to Diego and await a cute story. He blinks at me. I consider how one works with blinking (admittedly it’s not much) and look up as Diego’s papa begins checking the tuning of his ten-string Chilean charango. He bangs on his bass drum bomba a few times to let us know that he fully intends to turn our at the cross-roads party onto the highway and not into the ditch. Diego’s mama is adjusting the reeds of a zampoña. The reeds are pieces of cane of varying lengths and circumferences. Diego’s mama adjusts them so that the canes all line up and then she blows across the top of one of the reeds. It makes the sound of a long abandoned Coke bottle, left from a time when Coke came in a bottle. She nods at Diego’s papa and he gets this party started.

Boom-Boom-BoomBoom-Boom.

I wonder if the word bomba counts as onomatopoeic and smile down at Diego who feels just right nestled into the crook of my arm, like this is why my arm has a crook. Diego is content. He is not missing his mama at all. I still got it. My body still remembers how to cradle a baby. It’s just like riding a bike except that you shouldn’t ride a bike with a baby (A PSA brought to you by the Societal Council Alliance for Bike-Baby Safety, or SCABBS).

Diego’s mama catches the groove on the zampoña. Her breath jumps from reed to reed. Each note is a different reed and she blows the melody with all the confidence but thankfully with none of the magic of Zamfir (www.panflute.net). I look down for Diego’s reaction.

Amazon.com Widgets

Boom-Boom-BoomBoom-Boom.

Notice how Diego’s eyes blinks each time the rhythm comes around to the one. He is a seven-week old drumming genius! He is a maestro! He is conducting the band with his eyes! But no, now he blinks on the two and then on the four. Now he is blinking completely off the rhythm. Is he blinking some kind of code? Perhaps he has he gone Sun-Ra experimental? I make a mental note to see if Sun- Ra’s Outer Space Employment Agency has anything particularly kid-friendly. You know, for the Blog Magic.

Boom-Boom-BoomBoom-Boom.

I stop trying to follow the young maestro’s lead and instead find Diego’s mama taking over the drumstick and catching the rhythm on the bomba. She is rock steady. In turn, Diego’s papa begins playing the charango. The charango looks like its origins, a small ten-string guitar made out of an armadillo. Diego’s papa’s hand becomes a bird that flutters over the strings, and then takes off. Everyone is dancing or clapping or shaking their shaker and we are all terribly impressed with Diego’s parents. The song ends and the kids go wild and we all whoop and stomp our feet. Diego is soundly asleep. Your party is no longer just that birthday when you played that Norah Jones song. We have got a full-on bohemian rhapsody!

So this is Act I of my wife’s birthday party. Turn Me On, Norah Jones from the album Come Away With Me.

Tonight is your birthday salon. We have enticed our friends to come over with promises of veggie lasagna, carrot cake and wine. In exchange, everyone must perform. It is your house party, your artist salon and so we all must bow down to your birthday bossiness.

This. This is what we envisioned when we hitched up our wagons in California and headed Midwest, young man. This was the promise of having a house, a home. And now we are the reverse Joads. We are Bay View homesteaders.

Children are climbing up and down our stairs in various stages of dress up. Their parents point and laugh and try not to spit-take bites of fava bean salad and guacamole dip. Everything is washed down with local beer.

One of the minors has a minor fall. His alarm is tripped and he is full-on siren crying. He is scooped up and a gaggle of fathers do silly dances until laughter replaces tears. Now the injured little bird flies off, heading for the train table, the fall already forgotten in the drama of miniature train accidents.

And so, you take a deep drink of beer and announce that you are up first. You have practiced off and on all this week and now it is time to see what happens. Nerves fall away as you play the intro to Norah Jones’ Turn Me On. In the kitchen, I serve lasagna onto little plates and rewash forks. I sing along to this song that has been Suzukified onto my brain. Everyone hoots at the right places and stomps their feet at your impressive finger work. You hit a sweet blues turn-around that turns into a cul-de-sac and then finds a place to park. You raise your arms in triumph. Everyone claps. Tonight’s bar has been set high.

Next up: Act II

So this is what is on my turntable: Synchronicity I, Synchronicity, The Police, 1983, vintage vinyl

I slide the record from its sleeve, flip to side A. The needle hovers over Track I for a moment and then descends. Synchronicity I. My son enters the room. Something tells me it’s time this child of ‘07 hears an artifact from ‘83. A staccato sequencer begins a six-note cycle. Sting rumbles forward on the bass. Stuart Copland is beating the heck out of his kit. Andy Summer shimmers rock and roll power chords. The little one and I both hook in. We are powerless. The collective unconscious is expressed through us kinesthetically. Our heads nod to the quick beat.

With one breath, with one flow

You will know

Synchronicity

One of us wears, from eyebrows down, black-rimmed-Buddy Holly glasses, a stretched out favorite t-shirt and weekend-only jeans. The other one wears a red fire fighter helmet and… Well, that’s it.

A sleep trance, a dream dance

A shaped romance

Synchronicity

I’m not sure why the boy is naked. I’m not even sure how. I don’t think he could pull off the whole procedure himself. I do know that the little one’s expression has suddenly become alarmingly serious. He has dropped his little boogie. Now he is pure concentration. What is it, son? Has Sting’s message of parallel causality suddenly become evident? Are you shockingly aware that cause and effect are expressions of both conscious and unconscious realities?

A connecting principle

Linked to the invisible

Almost imperceptible

Something inexpressible

I know this look. This is no mere coincidence. You do not just find yourself inexplicably naked in the dining room. A potty chair does not just happen to be sitting next to you. Your papa does not just happen to be listening to a pop interpretation of Jungian synchronicity when he should be doing the dishes. No. This is all happening for a reason.

Science insusceptible

Logic so inflexible

Causally connectable

Yet nothing is invincible

Luckily I have spent much time deeply studying all manner of popular psychology and para-psychology. The bulk of my studies took place one earnest summer in 1993. I was a recent liberal arts graduate and I could not walk past a Kokopelli power crystal without reaching for my wallet. I grew my hair long and used another crystal, with no apparent deodorizing properties, as part of a natural yet ineffective hygiene ritual. Surprisingly, I couldn’t get a date.

If we share this nightmare

Then we can dream

Spiritus mundi

I guide the little one into a sitting position on the potty chair and hand him the album cover. He studies the band’s iconic red, yellow and blue stripes. Sting stares back at us with one eye. The rest of his face is hidden in a book.

If you act as you think

The missing link

Synchronicity

“Who dat?’ asks the little one. “That’s Sting,” I inform him. “The book he is reading says Synchronicity by Jung but that’s a pop-friendly interpretation of the book’s true title: Acausal Connecting Principle.”

We know you, they know me

Extrasensory

Synchronicity

During the earnest summer of 1993 I saw no inconsistency with wearing military surplus pants while carrying the Tao Te Jing (or was it the Tao of Pooh?) in my Guatemalan satchel. I underlined long sections of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, wore moccasins and tore through Carlos Castaneda’s entire oeuvre. I filled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with bon mots such as So TRUE! and When will they GET it?

A star fall, a phone call

It joins all

Synchronicity

The little one now stares past the surreal album art. He is not completely behind his eyes. His mouth slightly parts. He is reaching beyond himself.

It's so deep, it's so wide

You're inside

Synchronicity

That summer two friends and I rented a trailer home in the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rent was $300 a month split three ways leaving us sufficient money for giant jugs of Gallo wine, and infinite recursions of Ramen noodles and beans and rice. We worked a bit, and wandered the desert the rest of the time. The Hundredth Monkey convinced me that world peace was within our grasp. We all just had to GET it.

Effect without cause

Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause

Synchronicity

“I did it!’ yells the little one. He jumps up. His fire fighter helmet falls to the floor with a crash. I examine the contents of the potty chair like tea leaves.

“Hurray?” I say.

“Hurray!” says the little one. We both dance. We empty the contents into the toilet. I permit him to flush the toilet. Today it is his prerogative! (Is this the first time Bobby Brown and Sting have met in a blog? See, Synchronicity!)

So this is what is on my turntable: Walking in Your Footsteps, Synchronicity, The Police, 1983, Vintage Vinyl

We are five minutes late. Breathlessly, we join a rush of parents and students scaling the steps up to our school. Parental sherpas carry an assortment of backpacks, boots, lunchboxes, musical instruments, snow pants and science fair dioramas, all without supplementary oxygen. At the top of the stairs we unsuccessfully try to squeeze in with a herd of 8th graders. They are mastodons mindlessly trampling anything that interferes with their gossiping progression. I fear that my four-year-old might be crushed and so we wait for them to cross. As we do my daughter informs me thusly.

“I can’t wait for Dinosaur Day! We’ll hunt for real dinosaur eggs. We’ll have a dig and it will be REAL and there will be dinosaur bones and we will have a SNACK. I can’t wait for Dinosaur Day!”

We spot an opening, merge into the bustle and hustle until we are able to burst into the preschool classroom. At first we are a flurry of permission slips and Scholastic book orders. When I catch my breath I congratulate the teacher. My daughter has never transmitted her enthusiasm for a school project. Dinosaur Day? Genius!

“No,” replies her teacher, mentally replaying the week. “She’s been talking about it all week but Dinosaur Day isn’t happening here.” I shake my head. My brain is not making sense of her words.

“Your daughter has been very clear. YOU are to dress as a paleontologist. You must find dinosaur eggs. You must have a “dig” and it must be REAL. Dinosaur day is happening at your house.”

Evidently the big one has invented a holiday.

Panic ensues. Emails burn through cyberspace. There is only one shopping day until Dinosaur Day. What if there is a last-minute run on little plastic dinosaurs? Our child’s first invented holiday and we haven’t even painted dinosaur eggs for Ankylosaurus to hide. Where can we find a chocolate Velociraptor on Dinosaur Day eve? Has Tomb Raider been checked out from the video store? (Lara Croft was a paleontologist, right? It’s basically the same story as It’s a Wonderful Life, right?) I fear that our license to parent is at risk of being revoked.

Back home but no more prepared, I flip through my record collection, seeking holiday cheer for Dinosaur Day. There is no rhyme or reason to my stack of vinyl (Melvil Dewey would plead for decimal or two). As I reach the back of the pile I greet the forgotten records like long lost friends. I flip past Elvis’s Christmas Album. I linger with Jelly Roll Morton’s Dead Man Blues. Again I celebrate MLK’s birthday with Will.i.am. Remember that time we elected our nation’s first black president and got free burgers at Bella’s Fat Cat and listened to the David Bowie? Good times!

I shake myself awake from my reverie and return to the task at hand. Here we go, a carol for Dinosaur Day. Walking in your Footsteps, by The Police, Sting’s musings of humankind’s inevitable march towards a Jurassic-like extinction. Perfect for our preschooler’s first Dinosaur Day! I begin singing.

“Hey, mighty brontosaurus,

Don't you have a lesson for us

Thought your rule would always last,

There were no lessons in your past.”,

I slide the record from its sleeve. I flip to side A. My son, the little one, enters the dining room wearing no pants and a fire fighter helmet on backwards. I momentarily wish I had some Village People on vinyl. I make a mental note to consult eBay. The little one delivers his current signature tag line.

“Can I see?”

I hand over the album jacket.

I am sure that my wife is upstairs far exceeding my efforts. She is probably constructing a scale model of brontosaurus out of chicken bones, each bone color-coded and numbered on a schematic. But I can’t jump straight to track two. Not with this masterwork ode to the collective unconscious. Synchronicity deserves to be listened to as an album. None of this digital download one track nihilism. This much I owe my children. Before we can walk in the footsteps of the dinosaurs we need to explore track 1. Synchronicity I. The sequencer begins its staccato line.

To be continued…

So this is what is on my turntable: Astral Weeks, Astral Weeks, Side A, Track 1, 1968. Vintage vinyl.

It is Sunday morning; my day of rest. I sit at the kitchen table, picking at a piece of toast. Outside the window, snowflakes dodge and turn. They are like lightning bugs, their wintry counterparts. Inside, the kitchen table is covered with petals from valentine roses. I should clean them up.

The big one and the little one are presently in synch. They rotate around the record player, following the LP’s clockwise turn. They move out from the dining room, where the record player resides, pass through the kitchen, the living room and then back into the dining room. They are marching. To Van Morrison. Unlikely, and yet:

“Papa, we making a band.”

This comes from the little one. He has a penny whistle. He blows. The whistle screeches. He smiles. Repeat. He follows the big one and her arm-swinging stomp. Momentarily they are gone.

And then back into the kitchen. The big one spins out from the marching vortex. She becomes her own eddy. She spins and spins, her nightgown flowing up, creating a pocket of air between it and her. She does not fear falling. She does not contemplate how close she is to this edge or that edge. She hears the music, she closes her eyes and she spins.

Van Morrison flows over a simple two-chord vamp. His eyes too are closed. His voice rides an aural wave, perpetually crashing over him. Somehow he emerges from underneath.

If I ventured in the slipstream.

Between the viaducts of your dream.

An upright bass provides counterpoint. An acoustic guitar runs the blues. A maraca rhythm like a broom-swept street.

To lay me down in silence easy.

To be born again. To be born again.

The little one reaches the linoleum. Now he is spinning. The children are dervishes. They are planets. They are stars. I blame Van Morrison. This will not end well.

But I am unable to act. Their circles are perfect. They have not yet started to wobble. They are not yet careening towards the table’s edge. The little one has not yet been thrown over by centripetal force, taking out his sister at the knees. They are snowflakes, lightning bugs, fallen petals. But louder.

They spin and they are wonderful. I am overwhelmed by joy and sorrow, sweet melancholy of nostalgia for the present.

I am old and brand new and a stranger and completely at home.

So this is what is playing on my nostalgic motivational you-can-be-whatever-you-want-to-be soundtrack: What a Feelin’, Irene Cara, The Flashdance soundtrack, 1983.

It’s snowing like mad. I put a pen, a notebook and ballet slippers in a plastic bag, and then spend twenty minutes gearing up: hats, gloves, jackets, snowpants; then boots over pink tights and a leotard. We are ready. Once down our front stairs, the big one plops down in the plastic red sled. It’s time to get psyched-up.

“WHAT A FEELING!” I call. But it is a bit abrupt. There is no response.

“I can have it all,” I whisper. I nod to show the big one that this is her part.

“BEIN'S BELIEVIN!” I nod again. The big one is thoroughly confused. I am stuck being my own backup singer.

“Bein's believin'. TAKE YOUR PASSION! MAKE IT HAPPEN! Make it happen. WHAT A FEELING!”

For the big ending I push her and the sled down a blanket of new snow.

“Papa!?” asks the big one. She is alarmed and confused. My mystical 80’s philosophy has blown my young apprentice’s mind. I begin pulling the sled down the sidewalk.

“When I was thirteen there was this movie called Flashdance,” I explain.

“It was about this woman who was a welder. She liked welding but she really wanted to be a dancer. The music was really good and then everyone started wearing leg warmers. There was this other movie called Fame…”

“Leg warmers?”

I am suddenly aware of the generational cultural divide that separates us.

“Never mind,” I say. “ I’ll show you on YouTube when we get home.”

And we are off. It’s Saturday morning and even our most industrious neighbors haven’t yet shoveled their sidewalks. The streets haven’t been plowed and going to ballet class by sled makes me feel Jennifer-Beals-Midwest-tough. Like I just finished a rust-belt second shift and now it is time to dance. The big one and I pass a SUV spinning its tires and a rust-adorned Cadillac hopelessly stuck in a snow bank. We pass under the underpass (as you do) and pop out at Beulah Brinton Community Center.

We open doors that release steamed-up rec. center excitement. We clomp off our boots and inhale the sweet smell of stale carnival popcorn and that specific humidity that accompanies Latin-dance-inspired exercise. I feel Saturday-morning-no-shave-good and my belly is full of coffee and it nicely complements the margaritas I had the night before. The lobby holds a diverse cross section of Bay View. We are all excited. It is ten o’clock and it is time to follow our dreams. We identify other members of our tribe by our uniforms. We smile at each other.

The metal t-shirt teens carry guitars and grunt to each other. Baggy-short grade-schoolers help each other chase recently dropped basketballs. Magic-crystal-Kokopelli-adorned retirees carry yoga mats and nod serenely. Not surprisingly no one holds a welding mask or a propane torch. It is Saturday, so the weekday identities slip away. On Saturday, we are rock stars. We are swivel-hipped Latin gods. We are yoginis. We are ballerinas.

We round a corner and find a basketball court with a blur of pint-sized leotards. We relax. We have found our kindred spirits. We are with our people, our tribe. We begin the process of disrobing our winter survival gear and shaking off the Wisconsin winter. The big one spots a girl wearing a leopard skin leotard and raises a nervous hand: hello.

“Hi,” says the girl. “I’m four and a half. I have a pink leopard leotard.”

Her father is stuffing her hat and mittens in the arm of her purple winter jacket. He wears a well-loved flannel shirt, no doubt picked up second-hand. He has a recent coffee stain on his Lollapalooza t-shirt. He has also passed on shaving today. There is no hint of what he is required to do Monday through Friday. I make no mention of the fact that grades are due to my school’s principal next week.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he smiles. He speaks my language.

The big one and her new friend join a vortex of spinning pink lace. They run and laugh. They leap and forget the pressures of all day pre-kindergarten. My compadre and I speak no words. We don’t need to. Warm sunlight reaches the bleachers and we happily squint and shade our eyes. It is a simple Saturday. Two beflanneled slackers contently sit in repose. Being is believing.

So this is what is playing on my car radio outside Jose’s barber shop/ peluqueria, Home of Hair-apy. Brown-eyed Handsome Man, Buddy Holly, 1959.

I angle the Honda up KK into a parking place about 5 feet from the curb. I’ve got $20 in my pocket and a couple hours to burn. Buddy Holly is singing Brown-eyed Handsome Man on WMSE. The rock and roll is bubble gum sweet but the occasion is somber. Fifty years to the day Holly’s Winter Dance Party didn’t make the gig in Fargo. I sit in the car until the song is over. It’s February in the frozen north. Existential angst comes easy.

My eyes are not brown, at least not in the summer; then, a chameleon hazel, they turn a warm green against a backdrop of grass and leaves. But on this February afternoon, as I climb over a mountain of frozen slush, struggling to reach the sidewalk base camp, my eyes reflect sludge brown. I catch my image next to the neon sign. My dark-rimmed glasses are Holly-esque but static electricity has turned my hair into a crazy dandelion about to go to seed. I am brown-eyed but far from handsome. I need my barber. I need Hair-apy.

Jose’s is no place to go if you are in a hurry. In fact it’s a good place to go if too much of life is a hurry.

The barber, a protégé of José (try saying that five times fast) is leaning back in his barber chair, a copy of Labyrinth by Borges in one hand. He strokes his soul patch with the other.

“You a walk in?”

“Yep,” I say.

“I’ll be with you in a moment.”

He finishes the page he is on, lays his book down and glances at the clock and then his appointment book.

“O.K.” he says snapping out an apron.

I’m in luck. The guy with the foresight to call ahead is a no-show.

Luck on my side, I tell him to neaten everything up. I tell him to fade in the back, keep the side burns long and if he could take care of these eyebrows that would be great because they are starting to interfere with my vision. He asks for my glasses.

And so I leave 2009 and time travel back to 1959. Over the next hour-and-change I settle in for a warm, blurry bull session of art, politics and just enough crude jokes to remind me that this is a barbershop. There is no Super Cuts immediacy here. There is no push for metro-sexual products. After a hot towel and a handshake, I hand over a twenty and catch my reflection in the steamed up window. Winter and ironic radio elegies be damned, there stands a brown-eyed handsome man.

So this is the drum solo we are playing on pots and pans: St. Thomas, Saxophone Colossus, The Sonny Rollins Quartet, Max Roach on drums, 1956, Vintage vinyl.

It’s Saturday morning. The sun is bright outside our frost-laced window. The sky is clear and the thermometer boasts one degree. I huddle over my vat of coffee, the lovely steam dancing up onto my face. A java cloud forms inside my hoodie’s hood, creating a micro-climate that is far away from this January in Milwaukee. The little one races into the kitchen carrying a small drum. He is wearing robot pajamas. A bubble inflates from one nostril. It pops as he issues me a challenge.

“Crash!” he says.

“Boom, crash!” I throw back at him.

“Where your drum go?” he asks, shrugging his shoulders a few too many times. The little one is calling me out, a contest of percussion prowess.

“I don’t need a drum.” I scoff. “I have a….a flour sifter!”

I grab the sifter, a spatula and a frying pan from the drying rack. We head to the record player. This two-year-old needs to be schooled!

“Max Roach,” I sing. “Where are you?” I flip through my vinyl. I find the Sonny Rollins Quartet. Saxophone Colossus.

“We need something warm,” I explain. “We need calypso rhythms. We’ve been singing too many wintertime blues. We need Max Roach!” I give my frying pan a satisfying rim shot. The little one prepares himself for some straight-ahead jazz. St. Thomas. Side B. Track 1. Sonny Rollins’ homage to his West Indies heritage. The little one and I both love this song. It reminds me of the Caribbean. It reminds him of his favorite train. He calls the song simply “Thomas”. He is cooler than I.

Since this is jazz, and St. Thomas has no vocals, we are ready. Ready to riff, calypso-style, references rattling around like timbales.

Max Roach starts the calypso rhythm.

“Boom!” I say.

“Boom-crash!’ returns the little one.

“Go Max Roach Go!” I say.

“Go dog go!” says the little one, upping the ante. Oh no he di’int! He is not testing my P.D. Eastman knowledge. I am not about to be served, not by a two year-old, not this morning. I throw his reference right back at him.

“Do you like my hat?” I ask, riding the frying pan high hat. “No!” says the little one, crashing the spatula onto flour sifter. “I do not!”

“Good-bye,” I say.

“Good–bye!” he says.

But we are not done. My small opponent, while worthy, is about to be schooled like a dozen fish.

“A green dog, over a tree,” I say, trying to raise one eyebrow.

“Yellow dog, under tree,” he returns. I nod my head. Well done, son. I try again.

“One little dog, going in.”

“Three big dogs go OUT!”

Whoa! My situation is desperate. Papa bear has just burned his tongue on the porridge. I decide to blow his mind.

“A red dog, on a blue tree,” I say.

“Blue dog, red tree,” he returns. “Green dog, yellow tree.”

We are banging on the flour sifter and the frying pan as Roach’s rhythm begins to fade out. “Decrescendo!” I yell to him but the little one knows no decrescendo. The boy only knows crescendo, even after the quartet has left the building. I try one last desperate attempt.

“And now do you like my hat?” I plead.

“I do,” he says. “Like it! Like it! I like dat party hat!”

“Goodbye,” I say.

“Good bye.”

And as St. Thomas fades out, the Go Dogs speed into the distance, to their tall tree where high in the air they dance to calypso drums.

So this is what has been choreographed for my interpretive dance of hope: It’s a New Day, Will.i.am.

My daughter, the big one, has been studying Dr. King at pre-school. At home, housebound by the cold, she has been busy choreographing a celebratory birthday dance for the good Reverend. In her dance my son, the little one, is the victim of stature apartheid and is forced to go to a school for two-year-old shortness. The big one attends a school, on the other side of the living room, that admits only tall children. She dances the dance of a segregated tall child. The big one informs me that I am to play the role of Martin Luther King. Through my dance I am to inspire the nation to see that all children, no matter their height, should go to school together.

I suggest the music of Will.i.am.

The music starts. Despite an extensive and costly liberal arts education, I cast off fears of political incorrectness and embrace the role of Dr. King. Through my dance I celebrate MLK’s birthday and Tuesday’s inauguration. Never before have I danced with such abandon! I leap! I soar! I twirl at the thought of the good reverend’s dream no longer deferred! I exaggerate the nature of my performance for the sake of my blog! For the first time I feel like my representatives are representative. I swell with pride as I tell my children about our new president. I tell them that it’s a new day. I tell them that Dr. King wasn’t just dreaming. But we…we are ready for a nap.

I wake to find my wife watching the inauguration ceremony in the kitchen. We bake bread; we sing along. Especially to Stevie Wonder. Barack likes Stevie the best too and we feel close to the president-elect due to the musical kinship. Later, while she is bathing the children, my wife breaks into song. She has a great voice. She sings a medley of This Land is Your Land and America the Beautiful. It echoes off the bathroom walls and the through the house. I put down my blog and head upstairs. I tell them that This Land is Your Land was written as a response to America the Beautiful. I tell them that the songs cannot be combined. One protests the other. Matter and anti-matter. Republican and Democrat. Music on the 1 and the 3 vs. 2 and the 4. It doesn’t work. They cancel each other out.

My wife tells me that I am wrong. She calls me Wrongie- Mc. Wrong Wrong. She tells me that This Land is Your Land was written as a protest of God Bless America not America the Beautiful. She tells me that she has mad skills and can sing a medley that will successfully incorporate all three songs and will throw in the theme to The Love Boat to boot. She asks me what would Barack say? I ask her if they are on a first name basis now. My wife is not to be underestimated. It will be a great four years!

This is what’s playing on the Life at 33 1/3 rpm request line:

St. Louis Blues, Blind Connie Williams, Street musician, 1961

This song is dedicated to everyone who gave a musical instrument to a loved one during this past holiday season—and continues to live with them.

It was late at night in the Mississippi Delta town of Tutwiler. The year was 1903 and W.C Handy, the man who would later refer to himself as the Father of the Blues, was waiting for a train. The bench was hard but the night was warm and the train was late. It was the perfect concoction for the blues.

Falling two days after Christmas, I’ve always felt that I had a challenging birthday. Everyone is a little tinseled-out. “You know, I could really go for some cake,” is a thought that occurs to no one. But early in the morning of December 27th, I walked into the living room and found a battered old guitar case with a ribbon on it. Like King Arthur’s sword, a single ray of sun pierced through the December gloom and shone on the perfect wrapping for a lover of old musical instruments. I opened the case, its skin torn and battered, to find a resonator guitar, a Regal Dobro from the 1930’s bought at Top Shelf Guitars. This was the instrument that I would play so sweet that the women of Bay View would swoon and commercial fishermen would cry. It was a gift from my wife who clearly reads this blog.

W.C. Handy was a composer of marches. His mentor was John Phillip Sousa. He lived and breathed marches. In the morning he marched to breakfast and he was known to march in the shower. His wife reportedly was forced to leave him because of marching in his sleep. Should we be surprised then that, as Handy began to nod off in the Mississippi night, his dreams marched toward him in strict military time?

I have ridden our planet around the sun 38 times now. The guitar has made the trip at least 70 times. As I convert the standard tuning to open G, I introduce myself to my elder. I explain my good intentions and apologize for inevitable sour notes. I strike a string while sliding a metal tube up its neck. I aim for the sound of “meeting a dark figure at the cross-roads at midnight. “ The actual sound is closer to a “oh my god, is everyone alright in there.”

Handy was awakened by the cries of a guitar being played in a most peculiar way. “A lean, loose-jointed man had commenced plunking a guitar beside me as I slept. His clothes were rags: his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages.”

My wife has inherited some of the sadness of the ages. This is the sadness that is reserved for those living with someone learning to play slide guitar.

W.C. Handy, “As the man played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song struck me instantly. It was the weirdest music I had ever heard.”

My perennially optimistic wife (who, did I mention? Is a consummate gift-giver) has now involuntarily fallen victim to a post-holiday form of depression clinically referred to as PLABS (People Living with an Amateur Bottle-neck guitar Student). PLABS is a debilitating disease with symptoms that may include: irritability, pacing followed by time spent staring blankly at the ceiling, dry mouth and the making of irrational requests of “how about something upbeat?”

That night in the Mississippi Delta train station changed W.C. Handy forever. He abandoned marching and in favor of the jive walk. He went on to compose the jazz standards "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "St. Louis Blues". Some fifty years later, street musician and bottleneck guitar player, Blind Connie Williams, would be captured playing the St. Louis Blues by a passerby with a portable tape recorder.

The Dobro and I are not making music yet. The women of Bay View need not stock up on smelling salts; the fishermen can stow their hankies. Occasionally however, after the children have gone to sleep, a little of the sadness of the ages moans from my guitar. I stop suddenly and listen closely to the night, make sure it’s not the children that I hear crying.

So this is what’s on my interstellar record player: Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground—Blind Willie Johnson, 12-inch gold-plated copper disk.

“Papa, is it bed time?”

I consider the question closely. The children have been climbing on us for hours. I look longingly at the birthday present from my wife, a 1930’s Regal resonator guitar found at Top Shelf Guitar. It sits lonely in the corner.

“Well,” I say looking at my watch. “It’s 5 o’clock.”

“Oh, it’s way past my bed time,” says the big one. She really has no sense of time. “Look how dark it is.”

“It is dark.” I agree. “But no, it’s not time for bed. It just gets dark really early this time of year. Our part of the earth is tilted away from the sun. We don’t get much light. It’s the darkest time of year.”

“And it’s the coldest,” says the big one. She sits down cross-legged on a heating vent in the kitchen. Despite endless admonishments, she is wearing a skirt and t-shirt. Both pink.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s very cold.”

At least she is wearing reindeer earmuffs.

I get down the globe and hold up a flashlight. I show her how we are in the earth’s shadow. How slowly, as we get closer to summer, we will get warmer. I tell her that, from here on out, every day will have a bit more light.

“Where are the rocket ships?” asks the big one.

“Most of them took off and eventually fell back to earth.” I demonstrate fingers blasting from the surface of the globe and crashing back. I aim for oceans and avoid highly populated areas.

“But there have been a few, that took off and kept going. The Voyager spacecraft left our solar system in 2004, and won’t reach the next star for 40,000 years.”

The big one is nonplussed by the commute.

“Then what will it do?”

“It has a record player on it. If anybody finds it, they will be able to hear what earth music sounds like.”

“Is it like our record player?”

“The Voyager record player is space-alien friendly and it plays a record made out of gold!’

“Sparkly!”

“Absolutely.”

“Would you like to hear one of the songs?”

We leave the warmth of the heat vent and head to the record player. I cue the track. We turn off the lights and lie on our backs on the living room floor. Blind Willie Johnson’s ode to the dark begins. He played slide guitar. He was a Delta man. Carl Sagan apparently was a big fan and so Blind Willie became one of our audio ambassadors to the stars. So while Blind Willie’s gone from Earth, we still have his voice in a time capsule, his message in a bottle.

Metal slides across metal. Notes float in and out of the western scale. The darkness allows us to see through the dining room ceiling and past our house’s roof. We see past the lights of Bay View and past our fellow planets and our solar system. We look for a spacecraft speeding away from us, headed for distant suns. For 3 minutes and 22 seconds we look back 90 years and forward 40,000.

So this is the lullaby that I am currently auditioning: (What’s so funny about) Peace Love and Understanding?, popularized by Elvis Costello, written and performed by Nick Lowe.

The little one is sick. He stumbles around the house, his hands in the pockets of his overalls, mumbling the words “mama” and “Elmo” as a mantra of comfort. His fever is down to around 100 and although we keep saying that he looks better, in reality, he is a bubbling fountain of buggers and coughs. He has already stared blankly into a bath of lavender bubbles and received a cocktail of Tylenol, honey and cough medicine. My wife and I look up at the clock and discover that, incredibly, it is still an hour until his usual bedtime. It’s impossible to look into his hollow eyes and ask another thing of him or of us. It’s time to call it a day.

I hand the little one a Pippi Longstocking doll to distract him as I swoop him off his feet and onto his back. With the practiced hand of a cowboy calf roper, I put him into an Elmo diaper and robot p.j.’s without his usual attempts to escape. He is sick. My wife goes downstairs to get a bottle of milk for us.

I consider tonight’s lullaby, something perfect for the new year. I mentally flip through Alan Lomax’s Songbook of Field Hollers and Somewhat Inappropriate Lullabies. Ever since he was “the baby,” the little one has been fed a rich diet of work songs, blues and spirituals. This summer, he and I went through a Carter Family period. We rocked to sleep singing of unbroken circles and wildwood flowers. This fall we entered our Beatles’ phase and I sang a slowed-down ballad of that day’s events at the park:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide

Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride

Till I get to the bottom and I see you again

Yeah yeah yeah

Together we have danced the Tennessee Waltz while rocking in 3/4 time. Together we have fallen asleep under the stars above Laredo.

My current obsession, however, is early Elvis Costello. This makes coming up with a lullaby difficult. Elvis loves lightning-fast punk-rock down-strokes on his guitar. I have listened to the song Peace, Love and Understanding so many times today that, as I begin to rock the little one, the song starts to play in my head. The tempo for version is wildly inappropriate for bedtime. The little one lifts his head with alarm. I lift the needle from the record before the first lyrics leave my mouth.

I slow my rocking. Another version of the song begins to play in my head; a beautiful, gentle version by Nick Lowe, the song’s author. It is leisurely and loving.

As I walk

Through this wicked world

Searching for light in the darkness of insanity.

I find myself already nostalgic for the present moment. How much longer will the little one want me to rock him to sleep? How much longer will he require my lullabies? He is almost two years old. This will end sometime in 2009.

And each time I feel like this inside,

There’s one thing I wanna know:

I cradle the little one in my arms and look directly into his face. His eyes flutter. They blink for longer and longer periods until, finally, his eyes close. I don’t rush the little one into his crib. I don’t leave the darkness of his room. The humidifier whines. The heater hums. Downstairs I will engage in my distractions, uninterrupted for the first time today. Right now we are together, Papa and son in the increasing quiet.

“I love you, little one.” I say. I kiss his forehead. "Happy New Year."

What’s so funny ‘bout peace love & understanding?

Ohhh,

What’s so funny ‘bout peace love & understanding?

So this is what I’m humming in our school’s hallway:

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!, Track 3, Side B, Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, 1960. Vintage vinyl.

It’s the penultimate day of school. Winter break is bearing down on us like 200 kids with too much sugar in their bloodstream simultaneously realizing that there are a lot more of them than there are of us, their teachers. Yes, Yuletide mutiny is in the air and, to add to the excitement, speculation of an impending snow day is on everyone’s lips.

The veteran teachers know better. They will not let the glorious words cross their lips. They fear a meteorological jinx. But when no one is watching they can be seen whispering to themselves.

“Snow day,” they say, feeling the seductive words on their lips. Oh, glorious words! So full of hope and promise of not getting up the next morning, in the still-dark, and making one’s way to students who know that the jig is up. Round one of the school year bell is ringing. It is time to return to neutral corners, to take a rest and to return refreshed for round two come January.

I, on the other hand, subscribe to the “rain dance” theory of snow day alchemy. I call on the clouds to hold on to their precious cargo, to cross the Rockies and the Great Plains, to veer left at Sheboygan and when they reach a Great Lake to dump, dump, dump! I summon snowstorm hoodoo by prematurely promising to see colleagues next year. When I get home, I leave nothing to chance. I conjur up my mojo by pulling Ella from her record sleeve. She has been waiting all year to work her magic. I blow dust from her grooves and lay her on the ceremonial turntable. Ella and I order up some swinging snow!

Recorded in 1960, Ella Fitzgerald’s aptly named Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas is the auditory equivalent to a snow day. Ms. Fitzgerald has no time for a solemn solstice. She knows that winter must be fought back with joy and good cheer! Ella fears no storm. She knows Midwesterners’ most basic secrets: get some corn for popping. Open a bottle of champagne, full of sparkles and light. Start a fire and revel in having no place to go.

“Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!”

So this is what is on my turntable: Elvis’ Christmas Album, Blue Christmas, Side B, Track 1, Pickwick re-issue 1970. Vintage vinyl—reissue.

I’m all nerves. I’ve been solo parenting for three days and I need something to raise me up and cool me down. I hold the needle over the lead-in and lower it slowly onto smooth vinyl. There’s the familiar hiss, the pop and the satisfying pull of the needle finding its groove. Straight from the pick-up notes, it’s his voice.

"I’ll have a…."

Each note warbles. Each note moans. Each note is as lonesome as a slush-filled parking lot at the mega-mall. It’s Christmas with the king.

"Bluuuuue Christmas---without you."

I usually take my holiday cheer straight—no chaser. With my wife on the other side of the continent I need a splash of melancholy, something to dull the yuletides. That’s why tonight, Elvis' aptly named Elvis’ Christmas Album is simply perfection.

"I’ll be so…"

I’ve searched Bay View. I’ve pored over the menu at Bay View’s most tiki of bars. Even at the At Random it can’t be found. You might think that a piña colada, served beneath a black velvet puma ready to pounce, would sufficiently satisfy my need for sweet, boozy, smoke-choked chic. Somehow it’s not enough. My search is for the elusive Blue Christmas.

"Bluuuuuuue. Ju-u-u-st thinking about you."

For some, the holidays are sacred. For others, they are an excuse to revel in the profane. Elvis’ Christmas Album has both. First issued in 1957, side A held spirituals while side B held rock and roll. It wasn’t until a 1970 reissue that the sacred was allowed to mingle with its devilish rock counter part.

“Decorations of red, on a green Christmas tree.”

I head to the basement. The king’s voice is muffled down here but his lament resonates through the floorboards. As I climb the stairs carrying the blender, I stop and steady myself. The piña colada has left me tipsy but inspired.

“Won’t be the same dear, I-I-If you’re not here with me.”

Recipe: Bay View Blue Christmas

-1 candy cane, chopped into red and white chunks.

-2 scoops of blue moon ice cream from Bella’s Fat Cat, hoarded in the freezer since July. One scoop for me, one scoop for the king.

“You’ll be doing alright, with your Christmas of white.”

-1 oz. vodka

-1/2 oz. blue Curaçao liqueur

“a-a-a-and…”

Blended and served in a chilled high-ball glass.

Two straws. One lone drinker.

“I’ll have a blue, Bay View, blue Christmas.”

So this is what the family band is playing: Amazing Grace, inspired by Sufjan Stevens, Songs for Christmas.

It’s me on guitar, the little one on the little guitar and the big one inexplicably rattling a piece of paper. We are working our way through Amazing Grace though I’m not entirely clear on the lyrics. I am mumbling when necessary and generally keep the band together. Sometimes I am blind. Sometimes I am lost. Usually, by the end, I know where I am and can see. There is not much precision behind what we are doing. We do not sound like Sufjan Stevens but we mean well.

“O.K., O.K.”, “ I say putting down the guitar. “This is not entirely working for me.” The little one stops playing his little guitar. The big one stops rattling her piece of paper.

“Maybe you could play the drums,” I suggest. “ Or the tambourine…?” I let my artistic suggestion float in the air. I don’t want to be a diva, I don’t want to be “that guy” in our band but rattling a piece of paper is not quite what I had in mind.

“No!” says the big one, sticking to her artistic vision. “I’m playing the paper.” She nods. She knows what she hears and she likes it. The little one lets out a whimper. He has twisted his guitar strap around his neck again, cutting off circulation to his head. This is not good for the band. I untwist his strap and make another gentle suggestion. I am careful. The band is in danger of dissolving.

“O.K., Let’s take it from the top. Remember, it’s a “wretch like me” not a “wreck”, though that does kind of work, but let’s try for “wretch”. Little Guitar, let’s play less with the tuning pegs and try strumming the strings. Piece of Paper, maybe try playing on the beat, very interesting what you are trying, but let’s experiment with traditional rhythms. O.K., one, two, three, four….”

For years Sufjan Stevens made an annual Christmas EP. He recorded it on an old 4- track and sent the results to friends and family. He would insert stickers and holiday wishes. He said that these traditional songs didn’t mean much to him until he tried to make them beautiful. That’s when they meant something to him. That’s when the sound became sweet and he first began to see.

“Five minutes to dinner!” My wife calls from the kitchen. She is our Yoko Ono. She doesn’t understand the tension pulling the band apart. The big one climbs under the table. She is trying to retrieve her piece of paper. The little one has gotten his feet tangled up it in the guitar strap. “We’re having spaghetti!” Yoko Ono calls.

“Hurray!” says the big one.

“Hurray!” says the little one.

They break for the kitchen.

“O.K., O.K.,” I say blocking the door. “How about we take it from “being lost” and then do the big finish and then we are done.”

The big one and the little one stop at the threshold.

“I swear.” I hold out my pinkie for a pinkie promise. The big one hesitates. She does not take my pinkie. We know I have no solo career in front of me. I am Ringo-Starr desperate. We will be the Von Trapps or nothing.

“Sprinkle cheese,” explains Little Guitar apologetically. He heads for the kitchen of good smells. I look to Piece of Paper.

“What do you say?” I say. But I have given up. I am not even convincing myself.

Then, incredibly, from behind me, a few pick up notes play. It is a Christmas miracle!

“A-maz-ing grace…”

It is my wife. She is not wielding the colander. She is not enticing my band mates with sprinkle cheese. She has her mandolin and she is shepherding the little one back into the room with her legs.

“How sweet the sound.”

The little one finds his guitar and successfully places in over his shoulder.

The big one finds her piece of paper and taps it, just so.

I am found.

So this is what is playing in my neighborhood: Freight Train, Fox and Branch, Live at Anodyne Café, November 30, 2008.

Dave Fox picks up a beautiful guitar, a National guitar. It is full of red and orange sunbursts. It has a silver resonator that catches light from the late fall morning. “I see guitar!” says the little one. “I want guitar,” he says.

He is in mid-sprint when I catch him by the straps of his overalls. I gently lift him off the ground. His legs keep running, Hanna-Barbera style. We are full of envy. We both want that guitar. Deep down I believe that if I had that guitar I would be transformed into a guitar god. It has nothing to do with practice or talent. Once the guitar was mine I would play so sweet that Bay View women would swoon and commercial fishermen would cry.

“O.k., sing along with me,” says Will Branch. I am pulled back to reality. He begins the chord progression on a dark brown Gibson. Dave Fox finger-picks the melody on the National. The sound is bright and sweet.

I fall into my recurring live-music fantasy. It has been with me since I saw the Who in 1989. In this reverie, Roger Daltrey approaches the crowd full of worry. “Hello, Northern Illinois,” he says. “Me and the boys need your help tonight. I regret to inform you that Mr. Townshend has broken his arm and will be unable to play Pin Ball Wizard or do the windmill. Is there a single suburban eighteen -year old boy in the audience who can perform an accomplished windmill? It’s O.K. if you can’t play any of our songs. Can anyone even manage the chord progression of Lola by the Kinks?”

I find myself raising my hand, back in Anodyne Café. I pretend that I was stretching and put my hand back down. Disappointingly, Fox and Branch do not smash their guitars, nor do they perform the windmill. Instead they start in on “Erie Canal,” a cautionary tale about traveling under low bridges. In the accompanying dance, the children duck and avoid being clothes-lined by the bridge in question. I sing along. Only my wife notices as I bite my bottom lip, and sneak a little air guitar ala Pete Townshend.

Fox and Branch perform next at Anodyne Café on December 14th at 11am.

Part II

So this is what we are singing in the car: Punk Rock Girl, The Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba, 1988.

“Papa?”

“Yes, love?”

“What’s a punk rock girl?”

“A girl who likes punk rock.”

“What’s punk rock?”

“It’s a kind of rock and roll.”

“Like the Beatles?”

“Like the Beatles, but the punks believed you should make your own art, not buy it.”

“Buy art?” she asks. She is perplexed.

Her question is valid, and totally punk rock! For her, art is something you do: you draw, you finger paint, you cut up a catalogue and make paper dolls. Art is not consumed, it is made. She is such a good girl.

“Well, like the White Album-- music is a type of art. For us to hear the Beatles, I had to go down to Luv Unlimited and buy the Beatles’ White Album. The real punks said, ‘Don’t buy records. Make your own music. Make your own rock and roll.’”

I got her good. She’s thinking this over. I take a congratulatory sip of coffee. I’m such a good papa.

“Is Dora a punk rock girl?”

“Not really. But she does have a friend who is a monkey, so that’s in her favor.”

“Is Mama a punk rock girl?”

“Sometimes. Remember when she made that rocket ship out of a cardboard box? That was punk rock.” I leave out the part of how I tried to take credit for it on my blog.

“Is Cinderella a punk rock girl?”

Like a crow, the big one likes all things that shimmer and shine. She collects sparkles and drapes her body with them. She totters from room to room in her mama’s impossible shoes. The big one knows that her mama and I don’t care for the Disney princesses. We’ve explained to her that the princesses don’t do much. Inexplicably, the princesses like housework. Snow White happily takes care of her male friends who are slobs. Wendy takes care of the lost boys. Cinderella doesn’t seem too happy about the housework but her only aspiration is to be invited to that weekend’s dance party. To me, The Princesses™ have formed a sparkly cabal bent on selling my children gummy snacks and kids’-sized plush Barcaloungers at the Walgreens.

“Well…” I say.

The big one gets the whiff of a postmodern critique on gender and identity. She knows her father attended a small liberal arts college. She moves the discussion along before the princesses are ruined forever. She tosses me a soft ball.

“How about Pippi?”

“Yes!” I say. “Yes! Pippi Longstocking totally is a punk rock girl!”

“Why is she punk rock?”

When I am sufficiently caffeinated I have an annoying habit of answering questions with questions.

“Why does she have a horse on the porch?” I ask.

“Because he’d be in the way in the kitchen,” she says.

“And he doesn’t like the parlor. Why does Pippi walk backwards?”

“Because she doesn’t want to turn around to get home.”

“Yes.” I say. “That’s it!. That’s punk. That is punk rock!”

We pull into school. We are exactly 10 minutes late to school. But this time I don’t eject the big one from her car seat. I don’t run across the parking lot, stretching one of her little arms longer than the other. I don’t carry her up the stairs sideways and I don’t try to remove her jacket, hat and mittens simultaneously in one mighty pull.

This time we hold hands. We look both ways and then we carefully walk the rest of the way to school, backwards.

How about a DIY punk rock girl paper doll?