Old Goat!

When the boys toddled around, weighed down by infrequently changed Pull-Ups, and still occasionally now, we stop by the barn at the Prospect Park Zoo. Spend enough time in petting zoos and you will A) lose your mind B) contract an animal-borne illness because you neglected to use the hand sanitizer provided or C) gain valuable insights into human nature. (A and C so far for me).

Insert 2 quarters, dial up a palmful of compressed hay pellets and head for the pens. That’s my limit by the way: 50 cents worth of family fun and slobber. If they want more, I make the boys scrounge for fallen kibble. I think they like this part best, down in the dirt. If I could get away with it, I would sneak the wooly beasts heels of bread, but there are docents milling about. Feeding gluten-rich crusts to domesticates and water fowl is a big no-no. Even if I get around the docents, my boys know this no-no and are the worst enforcers. They would turn me over to the rangers in bermuda shorts in a little boy heartbeat. But I’m just not convinced Tom Turkey’s gizzard will explode if he pecks at an organic crumb of pumpernickel, priced at $4.39 per loaf.

Ever try to feed a Cotswold sheep with a goat standing by? Guess who gets the pellet from your palm?  Goat muzzles out sheep every time. As a kid, my favorite sculpture in the MOMA garden was Picasso’s She-Goat, a sway back, proud, pregnant goat with enormous teats. No coincidence there. Picasso strikes me as a randy, bearded billy. I love Picasso and I love goats, with their weird vertical iris, asymetrical markings and endearingly insistent natures. I love how they frisk up to the fence with a “Wassup?” Makes my day.

It was in watching this bully billy, on a recent Sunday afternoon, that my barnyard epiphany hit me:  the personalities we attribute to individual animal species can be reduced to single traits. Sheeps are sheepish, lions are leontine, and goats are, well, rascally, old goats. True to their natures, this old goat muscled out Mary’s little lamb, who backed away without a bleat. Yet here’s the crazy thing: this Noah’s ark of personality traits that manifest individually in our furry, scaly and feathered friends, floats within our single species. Homo sapiens exhibit a wild range of disposition, from self-effacing sheep to proud peacocks, from faithful dogs to fickle felines, stealthy scorpions to stupid asses. Zookeepers who dish out yams daily in the baboon habitat may rightly object to my generalization, pointing out that there are braggarts as well as cowards within this old world monkey family. Yet hide for hide, kittens are basically skittish, wolves wolf down their dinner, and baboons bear teeth, flaunt red butts and generally monkey around.

Ask yourself: why are humans so different, one from the next? Why are your kids so different? Why aren’t we all bearish or dovelike? My spin? Just another example of an inscrutable intelligence at work. It takes all types and a breadth of talents, to fill the jobs that keep this planet spinning. We need them all, the goats and sheep, wolves and owls, and especially the doves. (We can lose the slumlord cockroaches). I know God exists because for every job on this planet there is someone to do it. Some kids actually want to grow up to be phlebotomists. They see the reward of painlessly puncturing a hidden vein. Or how about offensive linemen? Plenty of boys want to grow up to be knocked down, again and again.

I have experienced God’s perfect floor plan first-hand at the American Museum of Natural History:

5th fl: arachnologists and entomologists corral tarantulas and stinkbugs
(astrophysicists are off in their own orbit)
4th-3rd fls: curators and exhibition crew build temporary shows
3rd-1st fls: finance, education, development & HR departments are tucked away behind permanent exhibits. Gift shop workers sell field guides and lava lamps
lower level: cafeteria workers and custodians serve it up and clean it up

And tourists everywhere. Eurotrash in expensive loafers pound the marble floors to see sulfide chimneys and duck-billed dinos. In its third century of existence, the museum swims along in its talent pool, a cultural triumph, a self-sustaining tourist trap.

I just gotta believe there’s a divine intelligence sparking the solar plexus of each individual, igniting our passions, guiding our vocations. The crossing guards ferry our children across 4 lanes of traffic, the entertainers lighten our load, the philosophers and shrinks make sense of it all. It’s not our superior intellect that gives us the edge over those that creep, cantor, fly or swim. It’s our varied temperaments that define our success as a species. The next time you find yourself in a room full of personalities, at a cocktail party, or PTA meeting, remember this: where would we be without the goats and the sheep and everything in between?

careers for goats:

• mayor of an urban mecca
• Food Network celebrity chef
• paramedic
• butcher
• graffiti artist
• rocket scientist
• romance novelist
• offensive tackle
• NASCAR racer
• baseball manager of an urban mecca
• ambulance chaser
• fashion designer
• plastic surgeon
• WWF smackdown superstar
• power/ashtanga yoga or zumba instructor

careers for sheep:

• mayor of a small, homogenous town
• vegan chef on public television’s Create Channel
• mortician
• independent, family farmer practicing humane animal husbandry
• origami artist
• rocket scientist
• business writer
• distance runner
• golf cart driver/caddy
• baseball manager of a single-A franchise
• real estate attorney
• quilter
• neurosurgeon
• restorative yoga instructor

animal adjectives to describe humans:

• antsy
• batty
• bovine
• buggin’
• bullheaded
• bullish
• dogged
• dovish
• feline
• foxy
• hawkish
• horsey
• mousy
• mulish
• piggish
• sheepish
• sluggish
• sphynx-like
• squirrely
• wolfish

animal nouns to describe humans:

• ass!
• chicken liver!
• horses’ ass!
• little monkey
• louse!
• minx
• old goat!
• pig!
• rat fink!
• shark
• snake in the grass….
• swine!
• tiger!
• turkey!
• vermin!

animal verbs to describe humans:

• badger
• crane
• goose
• hawk
• lark

Support

To defend against the fireballs launched daily at our vulnerable walls, these are some buttresses that keep the building standing…

The Usual Supports:

• family
• friends
• therapists (psychiatrists, analysts, shrinks, witch doctors)
• spiritual advisors (priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, gurus, senseis)
• psychics (soothsayers, astrologists)
• bartenders
• 12-step programs
• self-help books
• praise music
• spirituals
• Bach
• bubble baths
• televangelists
• vitamin supplements
• furry pets

and here are...

The Less Usual Supports:

• ex-bosses (the ones we left on good terms with)
• ex-boyfriends
• mothers-in-law
• sisters-in-law
• hairdressers
• barbers
• manicurists
• Zumba teachers
• tailors
• cobblers
• auto mechanics
• supermarket cashiers
• letter carriers
• disco
• techno
• tech support teams at the Soho Apple Store
• department store make-up artists
• guided meditation
• Tom & Jerry cartoons
• chewing gum
• non-furry pets

God defies categorization. She manifests in all these.

Tap into whatever supports keep your citadel upright until the fireballs burn out. You can also counterattack with buckets of hot oil.

Did any special supports of yours go unmentioned? Leave a comment so we can pool our wisdom!

Healthy Hoarding

Picture this: a low-ceiling cellar and 4 walls lined with storage shelving. The shelves are stuffed with: kidney-shaped hospital bed pans, vases from FTD floral arrangements huge pickle jars of duck and soy sauce packets.  Add gallon Ziplocs of medicine dispensing cups, travel-size shampoos and mouth wash.  Throw in, say, 19  gunky-eyed kitties snaking the legs of a de Kooning abstraction of beat up lawn furniture in the center of the floor.

No, this is not my cellar.

Now picture this: a low-ceiling cellar, a clear expanse of indoor/outdoor carpet, and one shelving unit. A bag of unopened cat litter sits under the slop sink, purchased in the hopes of soon adopting one clear-eyed kitty. The shelves are crowded with: chinese take out containers (the “bad” plastic,) styrofoam containers, leaning towers of pizza boxes. Also: aluminum lasagna pans, cardboard cake boxes, lightly used Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts cups, and a rabble of unmatched Tupperware and lids.  Oh and gift bags: Happy Birthday, Happy Purim, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year,  folded and stored, holiday-ready.

This is my cellar.  Is there a difference?  I think so.

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One riotous storage unit in an otherwise manageable basement. Not bad.

My clutter represents short-term, healthy hoarding. Healthy hoarding is saving stuff with the concrete intention of repurposing it. It’s the middle “R” in Reduce, Reuse, Recyle.  I mostly hoard packaging, packaging that has several more lives to live--like me.  I can’t get myself to toss a styrofoam clamshell that only housed undressed iceberg lettuce. Alas there’s not room enough for clamshells in the kitchen storage bench (already home to a family of paper bags) so down the stairs the styro goes, to be wedged between baby food jars and balled up Shoprite plastic bags.  But the clamshell will come back up soon, be filled with meatloaf and mash and depart with a dinner guest.  

Unhealthy hoarding, by contrast, is collecting stuff you’ll never use, for no good reason. Unhealthy hoarding fills subconscious needs; provides the salve to unspoken wounds of childhood. But hey, I’m only guessing.  I’m not going there. Google it yourself

Two other robust hoarding habits I proudly practice: composting and old clothing collection.

I amass food scraps, and, because I cook, that amounts to pounds of peelings, parings, egg shells, and coffee grounds, lots of coffee grounds. Every week.  Luckily, I’ve got Compost 4 Brooklyn nearby, a community composting project.

Darning died alongside his evil twin, ironing. I don’t do either anymore.  Holey socks and T-shirts wth split seams go straight into a tattered pillowcase, bound for the clothing recycling bin at any Sunday farmers’ market. Plastic produce bags of potato peels and a laundry bag of long underwear with spent elastic, I co-habitate comfortably with these, along with my passion for packaging.

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Why do I do it? Hoarding down to a single square of paper toweling?  (BTW, did you know a Bounty that shines a mirror, will then beautifully mop up the piddle of an incontinent 15-year-old poodle?) I do it because of the black and white film, still looping in the prefrontal cortex, of bulldozers pushing pyramids of garbage: trash = landfill. And setting the right example for my kids. There’s that too.  My boys are Pavlov’s pups when it comes to peeling tangerines. They frisk straight to the ceramic crock next to the sink to off their rinds. Kids follow their mommies leads, good and bad, don’t they? Mine will likely grow up cursing like former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn,  but golly, they won’t ever throw an apple core in a garbage can!

Promise

Step outside. Look up. The trees are still bare, the branches unchanged.  Not quite. The tree tops are swelling at their tips. Getting ready.

A child, looking out the window at a snow sky is getting ready too.

A runner at the starting line of the New York Marathon: on her mark.

A crocus pushing up through the earth.

A first kiss.

A child, placing a plate of cookies beside an empty stocking on Christmas Eve.

A roast turkey, just pulled from the oven.

Anticipation of something good to come. This, in itself, is a gift.

What promise does the closed bud hold for you?

It was a punishing winter. Happy spring!

FEAR

what I fear:

• elevators that stop between floors
  
• rejection
  
• meter maids
  
• missing bill payments
  
• loving too much
  
• finance fees
  
• disappointing my parents (still)
  
• retirement fund statements
  
• disappointing my kids
  
• annual reports
  
• knee injury
  
• making big decisions
  
• being alone with a box of powdered donuts
  
• fundamentalism
  
• bed bugs
  
• humorless people
  
• Martha Stewart craft projects
  
• aiming too high
  
• aiming too low
  
• spreadsheets
  
• getting:
  
  • 1. old
    
  • 2. sick
    
  • 3. infirm
    
• Dying
  
• losing friendships
  
• dull knives
  
• losing opportunities
  
• and I REALLY fear feeding my six-year-old:
  

Me: “You haven’t been eating your oatmeal lately William.
Is Mommy making it wrong? How would you like me to make it?”
William: “Mommy, make the oatmeal. Then sweeten it by not using sugar. (?) Then add chocolate chips and bake it. “(?)
Me: “Bake it?”
William: “Put it in there.” (pointing to microwave)
Me (serving it up): “Do you still want a bowl of brown sugar on the side?”
nod
William (heaping brown sugar into his bowl, patting it down, tasting): “Brown sugar mixed with chocolate mixed with oatmeal doesn’t taste that good. I’m full.”

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what I fear but face anyway:

• spreadsheets
• disappointing my parents
• social media
• disappointing my children
• driving on superhighways with kids and no snacks
• making big decisions
• baking soufflés
• bungee jumping
• cleaning artichokes
• rejection
• cleaning the cavities of raw chickens
• Martha Stewart craft projects
• losing opportunities

what/who I don’t fear:

• needles
• spiders
• sharp knives
• food processors
• the left lane
• the dark
• dogs
• people whose job it is to serve the public (politicians)
• people whose job it is to protect me (police)
• people whose job it is to cure me (doctors)
• people whose job it is to fix my computer (IT)
• people whose job it is to fill my spiritual needs (priests/ministers/rabbis/imams/gurus)
• steep sledding hills
• roller coasters
• Martha Stewart
• a good cry

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This morning, I got it right. William ate his oatmeal. Face your fear.

Soufflé Au Fromage
courtesy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking
by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

This recipe follows seven pages of mandatory reading on soufflé engineering. Skip them and risk your soufflé falling flat.

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Bridget Of Bensonhurst

Why would you want your Zumba teacher to be sane?  Mine isn’t.   Let me revise that. Bridget isn’t exactly insane— she’s just got a screw loose, the screw which holds back inhibition.

The over forty gram strides onto the mat Monday at noon, her green eyes naughty beneath blue shadow:  “Do you girls want hip scarves?”  We look at each other, the devotees of Bridget. “Sure,” I say.  Like a peddler in a Turkish baazar, she reaches into her duffel and pulls out chiffon teasers in primary colors. With bells. You’re jingling baby. “What color?” she asks.“Red,” I reply.

Are there other colors? I tie it on, and step through a beaded curtain into a hookah bar in Ankara.

Bridget sets our soft bellies on fire as she engages our abs with her undulating lead, vamping jazz hands over lunatic eyes— I can do that.  She pats her thighs assuredly to show which foot goes forward next. God I love those dumbed-down visual tips to keep me in the routine.  “You like eighties?” I nod, “Good, I’m an eighties girl myself,” and just like that, Bridget goes old school. We move from Turkish delight to Vanilla Ice. I haven’t had big fun like this since I was in skates with lightning bolts stitched over the ankles, and techno group Inner City was pumping through the English muffins over my ears as I traced figure eights in the asphalt in front of my house...

What’s really sane about exercise anyway? It’s a waste of energy when we should be focused on conservation. Aren’t we active enough moving those little playing pieces—named Theodore and William in my home—along the game board of life? Breakfast (rushed and largely uneaten) school drop-off, pick-up, after-school activity (piano/chess/tennis,) dinner, homework, fraternal fighting, brush, floss, gargle, books and bed.  Just getting to work too, that’s exertion enough: standing forty-five minutes from Midwood to midtown. Makes you want to put your feet up and eat a cream-filled, don’t it?

Yet exercise demonstrates one of life’s weird inversions—along with love, generosity and holiday cards—the more you give, the more you get back. Put out on the dance floor or the dinner table, scrawl or send out digital seasons greetings: guaranteed you’ll get killer energy, unmanageable leftovers and an inbox full of yule.

Beyond the power boost, there are those long-term bennies of raising your heart rate, you already know:

Why Women Over 40 Should Work Out:

• weight management
• heart health
• blood vessel health
• bone health
• joint health
• boob health

Terrific. But I’ll take the short-term perks too. The instant rewards for sweat and spasms in my seat cushion:

Why Women Over 40 Should Really Work Out:

• COSTCO
• Hauling spoiled six-year-olds
• High school reunions
• College reunions
• Running into old flames
• Running around in high heels
• Running around in skinny jeans
• Pencil skirts
• There’s less time ahead of you than behind: get more hours out of your day.
• Bonus: Endorphin rushes that beat back lukewarm depression and those occasional, gaping panic attacks that whisper you are alone in this world -- despite the mountain range of dirty laundry on the cellar floor to suggest otherwise.

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But Zumba only starts my week. What about the rest? Given little time and less money, here’s my solution to Tuesday-Saturday (God and I rest on Sundays. Sort of.): dated exercise tapes.  Last summer I rediscovered Tae Bo at the bottom of a tag sale box and I’ve been kicking back with Billy Blanks ever since. Passé push-up drills have their advantages. For one thing, there’s Bllly’s shorts.

Puts a smile on my face every time I pop in the DVD. Then there’s the seven-time World Martial Arts Champion getting deep, real deep, in the cool-down, in those shorts: “Tae Bo Cardio Workout is to do one thing. It’s to test your endurance. Get your heart pumping, get you moving, and bring life into yourself because remember your heart is the big muscle inside your chest that shows love, shows power, shows endurance, strength everything that God has given us, that heart shows. So if you keep that in shape you will have a long life...”

I’m also wearing out Chalene’s tape. No typo. It’s Chalene sans the “r,”  alpha bunny of Beach Body Turbo Jam. It’s a work out for the rods and cones just to manage the contrast between her teeth and her tan. Giggly Chalene likes to punch. Hard.  “Imagine there’s a guy on the floor.. Right there… BAM!!... Is that too violent?” Tee hee.  “No Chalene. Bring it on.”  Turbo Jam: Punch, Kick & Jam

Also worth mentioning, a fab friend recently gifted me with a couple of newer videos by celebrity fitness gurus:

Physique 57: Express 30 Minute Full Body Workout. Manhattan-based Tanya Becker gets it all done, head to tail, in a New York minute. Her hotties lead you through strange but effective reps with playground balls.

The Tracy Anderson Method Post-Pregnancy Workout

Tracy, Gwyneth’s girl, pushes you through a punishing post-preg workout,  swearing she can tighten up that belly baby flap.  Promises, promises, but I’m starting to see my navel again.

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It’s 12:55. I’m more than dewy. I smell like an Ankara goat.

“What do you think about me getting us some wrist cuffs and tiaras for next time? I can get those you know...”  Bridget’s serious. I am too. “Absolutely.”

Zumba with Bridget, gyrating out of control, and customizing her playlist to whoever’s in class: Mondays at Noon

Midwood Martial Arts and Family Fitness Center
1302 Avenue H
Brooklyn, New York 11230
718-258-KICK (5425)

More Insane Energy Tips...

Eat more of this:

• Oatmeal: In our home, only the dog and I eat oatmeal joyfully, but it stokes us both.
  
• Lentils/chick peas/split peas
  
• Chops: lamb, pork veal. Down to the bone.
  
• Fresh fruit by the bushel
  
• Greek Yogurt with granola (see recipe in blog post: “The Great Consolidator”)
  
• Okay, okay, let’s cop to coffee too..
  

And less of this:

• Kiddie carbs (pretzels, goldfish crackers, saltines)
  
• Grown-up carbs (baguettes, croissants, crêpes...Quel dommage!)
  

The Big Hill

“Nature is dangerous. No doubt about it. That’s one thing I know for sure.”  So says the ten-year-old.

It’s the second snowiest February. Snow is falling now. It’s slow going getting to the Big Hill. With each step we sink to our hipbones.  A goldfinch is at the feeder in shabby plumage. No sign of deer or wild turkey for days.

There are 3 hills for sledding on “4 Fields Farm,” ( an urbanites’ “farm,” where fields lie fallow and there are no domesticated animals, apart from a senior poodle. Granted, there is a squash and tomato patch come May.) The little hillock, not much more than a protuberance, lies just off the carport.  The kids can do this one on their own, if they are motivated to turn off glowing devices, layer up and heave-ho into the cold. Layering up is tedium in spades: undershirt, turtleneck, sweater (Nana insists on wool,) flannel-lined jeans, snow pants, socks (two pairs,) boots, double-knotted, down jacket, hats, gloves, scarf.

The medium slope on the west side of the farmhouse in the second field is long, but not steep. It’s well-suited to middle childhood. Sometimes we build a snow ramp towards the bottom, which really you need, to add a little oomph under your tailbone.  The gradual build-up of speed offers manageable thrills and spills.  We double up on my sled and give it a few good turns.  My eyes drift south to the third field...

At the southwest corner of the third field the Big Hill beckons, softly as snow descending, and just as relentlessly. Once you’ve done the Big Hill, you forget the others.  Two days earlier, skidding up Granddad’s driveway, plowed six times already this season, I look out over the unbroken whiteness and imagine my run. The Big Hill: best when the snow thaws slightly in the winter sun, then refreezes overnight—a 99 cents store plastic tablecloth of ice.  Like the medium hill, the approach starts leisurely, but then a sharp incline ends in a briar patch, full of juicy, buggy raspberries in July, now thorny canes piercing the ice—the razor wire of Attica or Leavenworth.

Ever since his freak camp accident at age 8, when he was made goalie—against his will—in a game of capture the flag, my son sees danger where others don’t.  A measured child by nature, he is unapologetically risk-averse today.  Score! The 17-year-old counselor slides into goal, taking my boy’s right ankle with him. Diagnosis and treatment:  an angulated fracture in two places requiring surgery, pins, and two settings in full-leg plaster casts to get it right.  A morphine drip in the recovery room doesn’t deliver relief. Another drug taps into the line to help the morphine kick in.   No wonder my boy shies away from reckless sporting. The little brother is the skeleton racer, this one is the curler.  But there’s more to life than curling, cycling and tennis…

“Turn right at the big oak,” I shout. (actually it’s a maple. Urbanite.)

“Mom, you’re going to die!”

“I am not going to die. I might get a little scratched up when I hit the raspberries, but I am NOT going to die.”

“You are going to DIE!! You are going to hit that tree and DIE!!”

“Theodore, there is no way I can hit that tree, there’s a bank of bushes that will stop me long before I reach that tree.”

One thing I know for sure:  I don’t know for sure how anything is going to turn out. I’ve sailed down the Big Hill, winter after winter.  Like snowflakes, no two rides are ever the same. This I also know: fearsome things usually haven’t  turn out as bad as expected, and things I assumed would go well, well, they didn’t.  

I also know going fast is fun. The left lane, the luge and red Ducati motorcycles.  When you take the middle hill, even if your Evel Knievel ramp is slick and sassy from repeated runs,  you are still in control. You are not flying. Icarus and the Wright Brothers were onto something.

Best to do the Big Hill quickly. Don’t over think it, and once you start picking up speed, don’t try to break your course by sticking a boot in the snow. Sure way to hurt yourself. Tuck your limbs in the toboggan, cross your hands over your face and head for the brambles.   It’s about being one with your sled.” Amen. I am one with Olympic bobsled pilot Elana Meyers.  And my boy is too, following in our silver-medal-earning run.

Alas, the Big Hill doesn’t offer big thrills today. The snow is too fresh. Then again, it’s just right for a maiden run by a boy with hang-ups.  

It’s a long haul back up to the house, the roaring wood stove, and cocoa, mostly undrunk, except for the marshmallows.  It’s a trek fraught with kid whining:

“MOM….MOM…..  I can’t do this. I need you, I need you, I NEED you…”

He collapses halfway. Send in the St. Bernards. I plant my sled straight up in the snow, backtrack and offer my hand.

He doesn’t take it. Gotcha! He leaps up, offers his snarky  smile,  and passes me, heading uphill.

“I don’t need you Mom.”  

I watch him, my son climbing above me, his form smaller and smaller, blurred by falling snow.

Madonna

When it comes to music, pick your lovers carefully, because the artists you fall in love with at 15, are on your Iphone at 50.

This recurring note—that genres of music take hold of your heart early on—has been ringing in my ears as I observe my son’s budding interest in The Beatles. Blimey, it’s the British Invasion in his fourth grade class!  Add to this the tugs of classical and pop on his tweenage heartstrings: week after week he plods through Minuet in G Minor for a piano teacher of limitless patience.  I know I should have light classical streaming at home, but instead, my little Troublemaker is moving to Olly Murs on the Wii World Dance Floor 2014, and his diva classmates are by his side, teaching him he has hips.

My reaction? My boy is ten.  I’ve got 5 years to work with. I better get in there and help him pick his musical life partners.  But what an “awesome” responsibility, to help him pick his type!  (By the way, that tired adjective, “awesome,” should be reserved for describing encounters with natural wonders or child-rearing, nothing else.)

It was 1981, 10th grade. We had our own riff on the British Invasion and I rode the New Wave with those cute surfers from Britain: Haircut One Hundred, A Flock of Seagulls, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, The Fine Young Cannibals.   I’m still listening to them—The Cure, The Smiths, The Talking Heads—this week, through one working ear bud.  There was also the friend from Flatlands into The Police, the frenemy from Brooklyn Heights into Dylan, and all of suburban Westchester into Meatloaf.  Then there was my big brother, coolest of the cool, into The Sex Pistols.  God Save the Queen!  I was definitely in the minority though, because Evelyn “Champagne” King made my Love Come Down just as well as David Byrne. I dug the smart lyrics of early hip-hop trio De La Soul and damn if Janet Jackson wasn’t In Control. And yes, I got Into the Groove with Madonna, still do. Two years ago, along with 111.3 million other viewers of the Super Bowl half-time show,  I passed my panties into the end zone to my enduring material girl.

So I’m sure I’ll be in the minority when I tell my son: “All music is good.”  If you look at music-making as an individual’s divine calling, his creative expression, her bliss, then there really is no mis-struck chord.  Behind every atonal musician is a mother, shaking a tambourine and baking brownies for the band.  If a song was born out of passion,  no matter how insipid the lyrics, who am I to say it stinks? I just don’t have to listen to it, and keep my lips zipped.   There were those ‘80s singers who didn’t make my cut then, and still don’t: no Hall and Oates, no Robert Palmer, no Cover Girls nor Debbie Gibson, and no Wham! (or anything smelling of George Michael.) But hey, if you want to Shake your Love with Miss Gibson, who the hell am I to tell you to shut it down?  

Both my sons spent an entire semester of first grade learning the difference between “fact” and “opinion.”  So why, as adults, do we blur this line, insisting that our view—“John Denver sucks”—is God’s truth?  I grew up sampling the 31 flavors of Baskin Robbins on dainty pink plastic spoons and there are even more Snapple options today.  We embrace this range of choice; so why are we so selective in what we allow to enter through the holes in the sides of our head?  Music shouldn’t have to “crossover.” If we could just  tumble in love with what touches us, not because it’s hip, or popular, or prestigious, not because it’s appropriate to our class, race, gender, demographics, or age, but just because it turns us on, wouldn’t that be something?   Nana could get down with Rihanna’s Where Have You Been.  After all, Nana does appreciate a beautiful alto.

So who will take responsibility for my son’s musical love affairs? He will, with a few tips from mom, who cares about the girl groups he brings home:

• Try everything

• Dare to like what you like

• Be prepared to be unpopular

• Don’t judge what others like

• Lyrics matter (but stupid lyrics, in moderation, do no real harm)

• Never be afraid to dance with girls

• Take musical advice from your uncle, still the coolest of the cool

• Check out Akala and The Gorillaz

• Start Mondays with The Clash

• and get into The Cure