the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
at the age of 37, she realized she'd never ride through paris in a sportscar with the warm wind in her hair... ~ 2001-01-21 - 00:32:46 just got back from the movies... my folks go to see a lot of movies, that's their main source of weekend entertainment since they quit drinking when I was 15. so when I'm here, I go to the movies with them. tonight we saw "brother, where art thou?" GREAT fun, really entertaining, fantastic soundtrack. we've actually been listening to the soundtrack for the last few weeks-- it's part of the weekend morning music lineup. weekend mornings we sit around and drink coffee and read the paper and listen to music. My folks have fantastic taste in music... lotsa old-timey bluegrass and country and mountain music, among other things. I had to grow up before I could really appreciate my parents' taste in music. the walls of the den I'm sitting in now are lined with LPs. thousands of them. I just surprised my mom... we were talking about napster over dinner, which neither of them have any experience with, and mom wistfully said she bet I couldn't find dr. hook's version of "the ballad of lucy jordan". within 15 minutes of getting back here, I'd found it and downloaded it. when I played it for her, she just lit up. my folks may not have been everything I wanted them to be when I was growing up, but in a lot of ways, they're pretty damn cool. an interesting side note: my mother's favorite movie is "montenegro"-- a cult classic you should see if you haven't. her favorite song is "the ballad of lucy jordan", by marianne faithfull. you'd have to know both the movie and the song to find it as wild as I do. montenegro is about a bored housewife who winds up having strange adventures and wild sex in montenegro, and goes home and poisons her family. the ballad of lucy jordan is about a bored housewife who loses her mind and runs naked through the shady streets, screaming all the way. my mother is not a bored housewife. she's the executive director of a non-profit that develops alternatives to incarceration and works to fight the institutional racism of the criminal justice system. When I was little, though, she stayed home for a while, and you could tell she was climbing the walls. she clearly felt overwhelmed as a mother. she had three kids she didn't know how to deal with. when I was 5 or so, she went back to work part time, working for a consumer advocacy group, and went to full-time not long after that. looking back on it I realize how badly she needed that. I'm the kind of person who could be happy staying at home with the kids, working on my writing. I need space in my life to breath and dance and love and enjoy life. mom's the kind of person who needs a career. I do have to wonder what kinds of escape fantasies she nurtured when we were kids. my sister still blames her for her failures as a mother, but I just can't see the point of holding grudges anymore. mothers and daughters. it's kind of the eternal struggle for all of us, isn't it?
(((rings))) |