Mamma Mia

I'm a huge music fan. In my youth (i.e. before kids) Ley, Nik, and I spent what little money we had on music and concert tickets. My first concert was U2 when I was a freshman in high school. Going to concerts was tricky with immigrant parents who thought everyone was on drugs and would wait up for me and nonchalantly check my pupils for signs of intoxication. The all-day music festivals such as Lollapalooza and WOMAD were extra tricky to get permission for as my father never understood baking in the hot sun all day to see 10 bands. "Don't you have anything to study?" he would always ask despite it being summer break. By the time my little sister was going to concerts, she didn't have to jump through as many hoops as I did. I took her to her first 2 shows: Indigo Girls and Tori Amos. At the Indigo Girls show we got hit on by a very butch group of girls who thought J and I were a couple.

D and I have completely different taste in music. He is definitely more Beatles- Simon and Garfunkel while I listen to everything from Billie Holiday to Sugarcubes. My son loves the music that I listen to. When I was going through a hard time at my last job, I made a CD of a whole bunch of up-beat songs that I played all the time. The boy loves this CD and requests it every time we're in the car. For the past few days, much to D's chagrin, the boy has been walking around the house singing Abba songs.

One of the few regrets in my life is that I never learned to play a musical instrument. When I was about 7 (my older sister was 11), my parents bought a piano at a music store going-out-of-business sale. Despite the discount, it was probably still more then my parents could afford but my mom worked extra shifts to make it happen. I will never forget my excitement when the delivery men took the piano out of the truck. I will never forget how devastated I was when after 2 hours of trying to get it through our narrow front door, they loaded it back in the truck and drove away. D plays both piano and guitar beautifully. I've made a list of 101 things that I would like to do before I die and one of them is to learn Sweet Thing by Van Morrison on the guitar. I've been debating about using part of our tax refund to buy a piano for D's birthday in July. I have daydreams of being a musical family with me on piano, D on guitar, the boy on drums and the baby playing the flute. Sort of like a cooler version of the Partridge Family only without the drug abuse and eating disorders.