Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Perfection and Grace

I dropped my 11-year-old off at school today. We waited in the car for about 10 minutes until it was time for him to head into school. We tend to listen to music when we're in the car together. He's an open minded music person, so he's up for indie rock, classic rock, and other genres. This is a kid who has Return of the Mack for his walk up song during baseball games (another story for another time), point being he's been introduced to many kinds of music. Today one of my favorite all time Steely Dan songs came on during our wait, Time Out of Mind, from the fabulous album Gaucho. The song that everybody knows from that record is Hey Nineteen. Time Out of Mind knocks me out every time. For both its lyrics and the groove. And the guest appearance by Michael McDonald. Damn. My little guy seemed to enjoy his first listen to the song. 

Anyway. There's not much to this except to say it's still hard for me to believe my kids are suddenly 14 and 11. At some point I might have something to say about observing high school dynamics through the experience of my 14-year-old. He seems to be thriving. High school was okay with me, and I made some good friends. But this kid seems to be relishing it so far. When our kids were babies countless parents who were more experienced often told my wife and me IT GOES SO FAST and we heard it so many times that it annoyed me but all of those parentals were totally right. It goes even faster than they promised.

The other day, a DJ on Sirius XMU was playing Guided by Voices and made a remark about one of their songs being on the station 15 years ago. It hit me hard. I remember getting acquainted with Sirius XMU and the indie songs they played at exactly that time, just before our now high schooler was born. I remember I am a Scientist being one of the first songs I heard on the station. Where the hell did 15 years go? All I know is I'm on the brink of 50 and I'm wearing middle age, certainly not with perfection, hopefully with some grace.

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