Music Lessons

Music soothes me. For the past few nights, I have been scouring YouTube and watching videos of high energy rock and R and B songs that just make me feel better. I lose myself in the music for at least a while and I can "escape" my problems, my sorrow, my pain and feel eased somewhat without having to resort to crack cocaine.

Music also evokes powerful emotions. Last night I watched the YouTube clip for the millionth time of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream" on Britain's Got Talent, and my eyes brimmed with tears and I felt all was well in the world, which I know is not true, but for five, very brief minutes I could hide behind a facade where goodness, the sheer, innocent goodness of a 47-year old doughty English spinster, triumphs over the evil of haughtiness and ridicule and pervasive pessimism.

Certain songs either transport me to a particular moment in time or recreate a special memory. When I hear Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do?", I am back in my bedroom as a teen, shades drawn, as I strummed my tennis racket to Frampton's opus and pretended to be a rock star.

Frampton's "I'm in You", a syrupy melody, was, I think, the unofficial anthem for my high school and early college girlfriend, Cindy, and me. Whenever I hear it, I think of her and of young, young love and how immature I was, but how powerful our relationship felt back then.

Don Henley's "Boys of Summer", which I literally could not listen to for a few years, reminds of a heart-searing breakup with a girlfriend, Amy, when I was in my mid-20s. It just hurt to hear Henley crooning, "You can never turn back."

Robert Palmer's "Bad Case of Loving You" holds a special place in my heart. Upon the recommendation of our labor coach, I sang a less than rock and roll version of it to Miguel every night for 3 months while he grew inside Verna.

"Hot summer nights/Felt like a net/I gotta find my baby yet."

Music also energizes me. I have over 1700 songs on my iPod in the rock and roll folder, and I listen to them in alphabetical order when I either run or ride the Life Cycle everyday. Certain songs make me want to tap my feet, sway to the music, or pump my body even faster. Anything by Bryan Adams, Donnie Iris, the Michael Stanley Band, the Beatles, Van Halen, and countless others are guaranteed to increase my energy.

Music can also teach or provide an opportunity for learning. The first thing Miguel does when I turn the car on after I pick him up at school is switch the radio station, usually on a jazz station, to some hip/hop, funk, rap outlet he's favoring.

Today he was listening to a song by Rihanna, a talented singer who gained further notoriety after her ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, assaulted her physically. Her song today was about S and M.

"Miguel, do you know what S and M is?" I asked as the song blared.

"No." His friend, Adam, an 8th grader, sat in the backseat.

"S and M is where people have sex and cause others or themselves pain and violence," I explained. "S and M is where something enjoyable is turned into something painful and violent."

I didn't see the need to launch into anything more about sex, sacred acts between consenting adults or intense physical intimacy and enjoyment, than those two sentences.

"Well," he said, "thanks for the information."

"Miguel, you know what I'm saying. Some songs just say things that are really against my and Mommy's values."

At this point, he may have been ready to jump out the car window, splatter himself on the highway and avoid further embarrassment in front of Adam.

Yesterday he argued with me when I said any and all of the songs the DJ will play at his bar mitzvah reception in August (the 13th) will have to be sanitized.

"Why can't the DJ just use the beeper when a bad word comes on?"

"Because," was all I said.

Sometimes one word or word note or one verse is all it takes, not that he was any happier.

"Mommy's all right/Daddy's all right/They just seem a little weird..."

Testing My Limits

OK, OK, I sometimes have a problem with patience.

As part of Maya’s routine check-up on Tuesday when we found out she may have a tethered spinal cord, they ran a series of diagnostic tests to gauge her development. The first one was for hearing. The medical assistant put a pair of headphones on Maya and asked her to raise her hand when she heard the beep. Maya raised her hand once, but just smiled and ignored the other beeps.

Miguel actually failed his hearing test when he was three because he never acknowledged any of the sounds through the headset. He was probably confused about why he needed to hear a series of beeps anyway.

For Maya’s second test, the medical assistant showed her a piece of paper divided into four quadrants. In each section, there were four symbols (boy, girl, two animals) and rows of the letter ‘E’ all pointing toward one of the symbols.

The assistant pointed to each symbol and identified them. “This one is a…” Then she pointed to one section and said, “Now, Maya, where are all the ‘Es’ pointing?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her face glazed over as if they’d asked her to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

That’s when I resisted the urge to temper myself and said, “This is a stupid test. How many three-year olds can figure that out?”

The medical assistant smiled sheepishly and said, “I know, but we do have to do it.” Then she handed us the paper and said we should practice with her. They’ll re-test her in 6 months.

I don’t need Maya to do well on these diagnostic-development tests because it will somehow validate our parenting or our DNA. I just get frustrated when kids have to face things that are to my slightly professional eye developmentally inappropriate.

Then, again, I am not exactly unbiased. We sent Miguel to a Waldorf preschool for three years and he spent another five in a Waldorf-inspired elementary school (he is now in a public middle school and thriving). This means he didn’t learn to read until he was nine and slept in the family bed until he was ten, but he could really manipulate beeswax.

The doctor gave us a Kaiser-approved survey that also assesses toddler development. There are a series of questions parents can answer and several more that we must ask Maya. One question is to show her a stick figure that looks like a half-completed snowman and then ask, “Maya, what does this look like?”

If she says a person, a snowman, Daddy, or anything resembling a human, we need to write that down. If she doesn’t have a remote clue or says “I don’t know”, we have to record those answers as well.

Miguel was sitting across from her as Maya pondered the stick figure, and I kept worrying that he was going to feed her the answer. But she plodded on by herself. Finally she said, “It looks like Daddy.”

For another question we had to hand her a writing implement and ask her to draw a circle. We needed to record how she gripped the pen or pencil and whether she could complete the task. She rested the pen against her left middle finger and pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and then drew an oval-shaped circle.

“I think Maya has very good fine motor skills,” I said to Verna after the kids were asleep. Visions of a masterful pianist or talented artist danced in my head as I contemplated Maya’s future.

But I basically thought the tests were silly. Parents could cheat with their answers and why should anyone trust a three-year old to be accurate about reality?

During my first summer in California, in 1988, I was the supervisor of counselors for the Marin Jewish Community Center’s Summer Camp. Each morning, while the 40 or 50 kids were gathered in a circle, I dazzled them with some telepathic feat that involved the counselors choosing an item from one kid and then having me guess it. I would hide and when I returned to the circle they would hand me my clipboard, on which was written the ‘secret’ item. My ‘trick’ never failed to utterly amaze and astound the four and five-year olds eagerly awaiting the day.

Anyway, one of the campers came up besides me one day and said she was sad. I said, “Why?”

She said, “Because my brother died.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said to her.

Later in the day I approached the girl’s mother at pick-up time. “I’m so sorry about Jackie’s brother,” I said. “She told me he died.”

“Interesting,” said the mother, “but Jackie doesn’t have a brother.”

So I am NOT saying kids cannot be trusted, but I am saying their grasp of truth is often anything but firm.

As for Maya, she’s fine and her motor skills and physical and emotional development seem to be progressing in normal fashion. First we’ll get her through the cognitive hurdles of the Kaiser diagnostic tests and then we’ll master quantum physics. And throughout the entire process, I will let Verna teach her to be patient.