Tonight, seven of my grandkids, ranging from age four to age 10, will be here for a party/sleepover.
It's a little insane to have that many kids running up and down the stairs, slamming doors and arguing over who's not sharing.
What's even more crazy is this is the 4th year we've done this, which means the youngest was just a year old when we started. That first year, three of them were still in diapers. And two more were pretty shaky on the potty-training.
What was I thinking?
I was thinking about how fast they'll grow up.
When you raise your own children, you don't know how quickly the time will pass. You get caught up in earning a living, keeping a household, staying afloat, and you don't notice something priceless getting away from you.
Later, you want to reach back through time and catch those precious moments, hold them in your fist, squeeze out the joy you were too busy to drink deeply as it spun past.
As a grandparent, you know you only have a moment, in instant, a flash, to see them in their kindergarten pageants, to admire their artwork on a schoolroom wall, to huddle on uncomfortable bleachers and cheer them on to victory, to sit in a darkened theater and watch them try on being someone else. You know you'll have only one or two chances to see her in a prom dress, him in a suit, looking so beautiful in all their adolescent awkwardness it makes you want to weep. You know that all too soon they'll be starting high school, starting college, starting jobs, starting families.
And when that happens, they'll be too busy to party with Grandma.
So bring on the damp sheets, the too-much-partying tummy aches, the I-miss-my-mommy trips home in the middle of the night.
Tonight we drain the sippy cup of joy.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Christmas Songs
(From XKCD.com.)
A Facebook friend posted this last week and it made me laugh, but it also made me wonder which Gen X and Y Christmas songs were being ignored.
After some research, I came up with the following list of Christmas songs released since 1970:
Give Love on Christmas Day The Jackson Five 1970
Merry Christmas Darling The Carpenters 1970
This Christmas Donny Hathaway 1970
Happy Christmas (War is Over) John Lennon and Yoko Ono 1971
Step Into Christmas Elton John 1973
I Believe in Father Christmas Greg Lake 1974
Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy David Bowie and Bing Crosby 1977
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer Elmo and Patsy 1979
Wonderful Christmastime Paul McCartney 1979
Do They Know It's Christmas Band Aid 1984
Last Christmas George Michael and Wham 1984
A Christmas Long Ago The Echelons 1987
Christmas Serenade Johnny Maestro and The Brooklyn Bridge 1989
Merry Christmas All Denise Montana 1993
You're My Christmas Present Jimmy Beaumont and The Skyliners 1999
All I Want for Christmas Is You Mariah Carey 2010
So, it appears to me that we listen to the Boomer classics, not because we're recreating our childhood, but because most of the stuff since then kind of sucks.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Comedy and Anger
So I was reading McKee's Story last night: "Comedy is at heart an angry, antisocial art. To solve the problem of weak comedy, therefore, the writer first asks: What am I angry about? He finds that aspect of soeciety that heats his blood and goes on an assault."
Years back, I watched my company go from 9000 employees to 3000 over a four-year period. It was month after month of seeing shell-shocked people lose their livelihoods, including the guy who had three kids with muscular dystrophy, whose health insurance expired at midnight the day he was let go. I wrote an essay called "What To Do When You Get Laid Off." It was full of suggestions for regressive behavior to engage in as they walked you out the door. (You can see a shortened version here.) I read the essay at open mic night at the Antioch Writers' Workshop and people laughed. A lot. Waves of laughter rolling toward me.
One of the workshop teachers was also a comedy writer for the Gary Burbank show. (Burbank was a radio show host in Cincinnati famous for his comedy skits.) After the reading, she told me, "You're not funny." She said true humor comes, not while you're still angry, but after you've processed that anger.
So who's right? Her or McKee?
Rage does fuel comedy. But it's also scary and off-putting. I was never a Sam Kinnison fan--he was just too angry for me. On the other hand, Lewis Black's rants totally slay me. I suspect everyone has a fulcrum for humor--stuff on one side is funny, stuff on the other side feels too uncomfortable. The comic geniuses are the people who can get you to shift that fulcrum, who can lure you over to the dark side where you see things differently. That's why comedians have so much power for social justice.
What made Erma Bombeck funny was that her essays had this little bite of unpalatable truth to them--the truth that, as much as we love our kids, our husbands, our lives, there are times when we don't like them very much. Example: "I am one of those devoted wives who is trying to up the retirement age for men to 95. My motives are purely selfish. I don't think I could stand Mr. Fixit around the house for longer periods than my present four hours a day, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays." Not too edgy by today's standards, but she wrote that in 1966, when women were still expected to be Suzy Homemaker and like it. Erma did her bit for women's liberation.
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