This mother had her son taken from her at Hartsfield, without her permission. By TSA agents! There is something seriously wrong in our world. Seriously wrong. How much you want to bet that those folks are never held accountable?
I hope this gets picked up by the big news folks, and some heads roll.
Update: And now it seems this nutjob may have embellished her story a bit. . . .
Tiller saw her first show today. She is three. Okay, not an actual concert, but she did check out of preschool early and go see Phoenix with me at Criminal Records. (Good mother? Bad mother?) It was pretty damn crowded and, evidently, hipsters don’t let kids go to the front so that they can see over all their cold weather hats, so I held her up in the back while they played. Note to self: Get there earlier to score room up front. She liked the songs she knew (Lisztomania and 1901) and kind of put her head on my shoulder and hummed and patted my back during the others. That was sweet. They sounded pretty good, especially his voice. I was proud of Tiller picking out the instrument when they played the keyboards. She said, “Piano!” which is close enough for me. She asked me while we were waiting “Why are there no other kids here?” Then later, we saw another one. She was being taken out of the store, so I guess she lost interest. She was about the same age, but damn, was that kid all decked out. She was wearing rainbow legwarmers for God’s sake. Whatever. . . Tiller totally outlasted her. In fact, tills made it through four songs, and only lost interest when they played Lizstomania for the second time. (Evidently, they had technical difficulties the first time, and they were recording it for radio.) I rewarded her with pizza at Savage. They had pizza at Criminal, but i know better than to mix Tiller, pizza, and comic books. All in all, a nice outing on a beautiful day.
Glad I went, too, as it continues the rock and roll wave I’ve been riding of late. I saw Yo La Tengo a couple weeks ago both at the instore at Criminal and their show at Variety. Sunday night, I saw Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks at Masquerade. (Great show!) Then last night, Todd and I saw Dr. Dog at The Loft. That was the best of all the shows, in my opinion, and i really like Frightened Rabbit a lot, so that is a pretty bold statement. I still think the Frightened Rabbit album is my favorite so far this year (Thanks for the introduction, Spaceboy!), but Dr. Dog’s musicianship was amazing. They sounded great vocally and they were the tightest band I’ve seen in ages, especially in a venue of that size. Added plus: Got to hang out with Robin and Vanessa.
I haven’t seen this many shows in a one month period in ages. I cannot REMEMBER seeing more than three bands in a week in . . . probably since before I had Rollie. It has really reminded me of how much I love seeing live music and that I need to remember to stop saying, “I don’t have time for that” and start saying, “I need to do this for me.”
Video from Criminal today. Guess not too many folks are back to work and posting video yet, because this was the closest I could find. Sound is great, though. Kind of bummed that I couldn’t find any video of the Frightened Rabbit or Dr. Dog shows. Found We Were Promised Jetpacks, but the sound was kind of funky. Same with the Yo La Tengo. Oh, well.
My Mom came to my house yesterday and last night, she took us to dinner at S&S. If you don’t know what S&S is, it is just like Morrison’s, except they don’t have the same lemon pie that Morrison’s had every Sunday after church when I was growing up. I got the usual, a veggie plate. It is awesome, and when you go at 6 pm, it is you and all the blue hairs, which i love. Sure enough, I saw my neighbors there. It love that where i live, I often run into my neighbors – makes me feel like I live in a small town in the city.
Afterwards I drove over to the liquor store, because darn it, my basement flooded and Mama needed a beer. Since Mom was there, I was able to leave her and the kids in the car while I went in. This is good, because nothing says classy like dragging your three and six-year-old into the liquor store with you, except maybe doing so with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of your mouth.
When i got back to the car, my mom was cracking up. I asked her what she was laughing at, and she proceeded to tell me about the discussion she and the kids had while I was inside.
Tiller: “What is Mama getting?”
Rollie: “She’s buying beer. And Wine. And Spirits.”
Yes, Rollie can read now and had read the signs on the buildings. Luckily, I was at a nice liquor store, otherwise, it would have been, “Mama’s buying beer, wine, nails, pagers, wings, lottery tickets.”
Hmm. I say “Liquor Store.” What do you call it? “Package Store?”
We got a bit of rain today. This is what grandma and Mama might refer to as a Toad Strangler, with lots of God Bowling, although there was a moment in early afternoon of The Devil Beatin’ His Wife.
And this was all over Facebook today, but I am too tired from cleaning out my damn flooded basement to come up with anything original, so this pretty much sums it up. I love how a tragedy or huge event like this flood results in some really funny jokes. This is the best. Pokes at Sonny Perdue praying for rain also crack me up.
In all seriousness, there was some sad stuff in Atlanta today – Loss of life. And I am thankful all my peeps are alright. Tiller and Rollie are tucked in with no school to get up for tomorrow, mama made it to Atlanta and had to pitstop at Lisa’s due to the blocked roads, and Lisa had a tree fall on her house, but all my folks are safe. Even that piece of shit I married, sitting up at the W in NYC, drinking a beer in crisp white sheets. Just kidding T. Send me that check, baby.
I hope that wasn’t thunder I just heard.
So, Todd is in NYC all week for work, and he gave me the afternoon off yesterday, so that I could have kid-free time before the week kicks into gear. I rode down to L5P with neighbor Scott and his friend Seth. Ah, the glamour of arriving anywhere in a minivan. Nothing like it.
We proceeded to Criminal Records for the 4 pm Yo La Tengo instore. Scott bought the new album and got it signed. He is a record nerd, which always cracks me up. He is v. knowledgeable about music and we like a lot of the same stuff, and I even like him despite the fact that he likes Phish. YLT played a short set (mostly new stuff, including the fun “Periodically Double or Triple,” and a Beatles cover – name? Cannot remember) bantered with the crowd in their usual witty and self-deprecating way, and sounded pretty good. A fun time, despite the fact that I am coming down with a cold, and it was hot as Hades in the damn place.
Speaking of, let’s take a moment to discuss my thoughts on dressing for Fall in the South, shall we? I automatically think that you are a complete idiot if the temperature is in the 70s and 80s and you wear any of the following:
I then bought a couple of CDs (browsing without children! No hand-holding! Awesome!) and then went next door to The Porter. I had not been there before, and I LOVED it. Great beer list; knowledgeable, witty, friendly staff; comfortable bar stools; good pub food (at least what I had – the Porter Poppers – was excellent). I love the atmosphere and had a wonderful, three-beer afternoon to myself, sitting at the bar, reading for a couple hours, periodically looking up to watch the folks outside walking by in the rain.
I am my mother’s daughter, so I did chat up some fellow patrons and the bartender. Met a couple people who had driven all the way from Florida to see Yo La Tengo. I am always impressed by road-tripping music fans. (As long as they like good music, of course.) And then another guy sat down next to me. Turned out we had both grown up in Atlanta and knew some of the same people. Georgia and Ira from YLT came in, presumable for dinner, and walked to the back of the bar. Todd arrived, having pawned the kids off onto my dear sister. We had another beer and chatted with the Atlanta guy, nodding our heads as the conversation got weird, and involved his life and death experience, and how he saw levitating beers come up out of their glasses and float in the air. Nope, not kidding. He said all this with a straight face, and I love my husband, because we both just nodded like we were listening seriously to him, and never took our eyes off him. Nodding, nodding. But we know one another well enough that we were having an unspoken conversation that went something like this:
Todd: “Did he just say that he died and then came back to life?”
Me: “He just said that he and the chick from the band BabyShakes watched their beers leave the glasses and float up solid in the air and then splash back down on the bar. No one else there saw it.”
Todd: “Yep. Did he just say that she understood all this, and that he figured out the whole thing in numbers and did the math? Were there numbers after the decimal point?”
Me: “Yep. They had a connection. What the fuck is he talking about? Is there a mathematical formula for crazy?”
Todd: “Yes, evidently, there is, and he has solved it.”
Me: “I’m going to chug the last few sips of this beer, then excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room.”
Todd: “I’m gonna get the check and pay up.”
Me: “Tip the bartender well.”
Todd: “You know it.”
[Aloud] “It was so nice meeting you. You take care now, okay?”
After that, we paid up and met Scott and Seth at Vortex. Not my favorite place to eat, but Scott wanted it, because he can’t eat there with children. This is a common theme for parents. It is like when I don’t have kids with me, I choose where to sit based on it being where I wouldn’t usually sit with the kids. This is usually the bar.
The best part about this was that I got to see the first quarter of the Bulldogs playing Arkansas. The rest of the night, I received stellar and timely text updates from both Brett and Jason B. It was much appreciated, and Brett got extra points with Todd for his unsolicited Auburn updates, including the non-score-related “Auburn fans have a Brokeback Mountaineers sign.” Good job, boys. Will be watching the DVR-ed version this afternoon.
We headed over to the show. I ran into a guy i knew in Athens named Roger. We caught up for a while, and then I headed down to see the show up front. YLT were good, as always. Todd and I discussed the fact that Ira always seems to bring it full-tilt. I like the fact that he is aging, but still seems to rock out and have a blast just like a teenager. I have seen them quite a few times, and they always do a good show, but this was not one of their better ones, in my opinion. This probably owes more to the fact that they played mostly new stuff than to any deficiency on their parts. Highlights for me were still the more rockin’ older songs: Deeper into Movies, Autumn Sweater, etc. Autumn Sweater sounds different every time that I hear them play it and i loved this loungier version. Georgia did a few songs. I love her sweet voice, and that she is such an enduring rock chick. In the face of so many bombastic female voices in rock, her quiet modesty is refreshing.
Afterwards, we met friends Gretchen and Brownlee at The Porter for a last beer. (Feeling kinda ookie, I opted for a water.) And headed home! All in all, a great day despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent. Hopefully, the memory of my mostly kid-free day will get me through the week ahead.
My little man is getting so big. He learned to ride a bike without training wheels, he has loose teeth ready to fall out, and Sunday, he had his first baseball game. I have turned into a Soccer mom, chauffeuring kids to school, and bus stop, and baseball practice, soccer practice, and ballet. I have somehow become a person who attends a kids’ baseball game, a soccer game, and a soccer clinic every weekend in the fall. I have an actual magnetic soccer ball on my minivan. I have a minivan! I know where to buy ballet shoes, for fuck’s sake! I don’t even know who I am anymore.
I always said, “Oh, I’ll never be one of those parents who [insert crossed-that-line-already variable here].” I am one of those parents. Soccer ball. Minivan. Little girl who wears dresses, owns Barbies. Too much tv. Chicken McNugget. Name a line that I drew in the sand; I have since crossed it. Oh, except Bratz. NEVER IN MY HOUSE. EVER.
The funny thing, though? You realize that parents don’t do these things because they want them, necessarily. (Although I am sure some do.) They often do it because they realize it is what the kids want. My kids like to play baseball and soccer and do ballet. It is good for them to run around. They like Barbie and Hot Wheels. Tiller likes dresses and bows. Rollie got excited about putting the magnetic soccer ball his coach gave him onto the van. I couldn’t say no to that! I countered it with a Mac sticker.
And in participating in all that (and I have never been a joiner – I do not tend to like to be part of a group), i have found that it is not so bad. It is kind of fun to watch your kid on a baseball field, having fun. You remember what it was like to stand in left field or right field, bored out of your mind, dancing in the wet grass, or kicking some dirt at third base. Watching your daughter meet other kids during the game and run around and climb trees, or play in the creek behind the field, or swing from the bleachers, you remember that once upon a time, you were that kid keeping yourself occupied while a sibling was on the field. You check out the goods at the Concession stand. You remember that after the game, whether you win or lose, you get pizza or ice cream.
A friend of mine is being buried today. I could not make the funeral and I am sad about that. I know that there are others who couldn’t make it either, but that we are all there in thought and, some of us, in prayer.
Charles (we all called him “Spanky”) was not a close friend, but he was a friend, nonetheless. He was a boy who was in my classes. He was a boy who was at parties, who gave great hugs, had a big heart, and was quick to laugh. Charles’ laugh was so distinctive that I can still hear it in my head, clear as a bell. After twenty years, I can still hear his laugh like it was yesterday.
Last Saturday, Charles shot his father, and then he shot himself. The grief one feels over a friend killing themselves is overwhelming. The grief of knowing that someone you cared about took a life, much less the life of someone so close to them. . . that grief is almost unbearable. It makes you want to sleep to escape the thought of it. It makes you want to climb right out of your own skin to stop feeling it. You don’t want to imagine the grief of a mother, a sister suffering the pain of such a loss. And yet you cannot get away from it. It permeates everything.
You try not to think about it, but you can’t stop. It keeps you up at night, wondering how it turned out this way. You think, here I am, with my loving husband, my wonderful children, and my happy home. Here I am twenty years later (a blink of an eye, really) and where did Charles go? What happened to him in the last twenty years?
I cannot reconcile the boy I knew with the picture in my head of the man he became.
I have thought of it hourly for the last five days. I have wondered how it was him that ended up with an addiction. There were so many of us, and so many of us did more than we should have, and what made him the victim of addiction? It could have been any of us. “There but for the Grace of God go I” is on a loop in my head this week. I have thought about God, and heaven, and forgiveness. I have thought about whether there is an afterlife, and if it is punitive, or if it is a place where we all will find forgiveness, solace, and peace. I came up with no answers, save one: We are all so intertwined.
When I think of the community I came from, one that is grieving from top to bottom, one that was touched in so many ways by this one family, I know this: We are all intertwined. The things we do have an impact. Sometimes that impact is not seen until we lose a piece of ourselves. And then it breaks down and we are so very aware of the gaping holes in our lives. This one boy with the unique laugh was a friend to so many of us. He was a son, a brother, a cousin. And his loss and the loss of his father are felt so very strongly by one community today. The one thing I know is that we are all stronger for having known one another and that each and every one of us can never forget that we hold those that love us in the palms of our hands.
This is for the town that I have scorned. The town that has changed so much over the years and which I was so glad to have left. But that town is not just growth and development and a homogeneous population. It is the town where I grew up. It is a community, no matter how far flung we all our now; Deep down, we are still those kids that walked to school through an old cemetery to sit in run-down classrooms together. We are church groups, and football teams, and kids who sneaked into neighborhood pools together. We fought at the water tower. We are a bunch of kids in the McDonald’s parking lot on a Friday night, waiting to see where the party would be that night.
This is for Roswell, a community that lost two of her own this week, and who is the lesser for the loss, but the greater for having known each other.
Another friend sent me the lyrics to this song. I have heard from distraught friends all week long. It has hurt my heart, but reminded me that I came from somewhere, that we all came from the same place. That when one of us hurts, we all hurt.
Adapted from the Will Oldham song.
And the original:
From the principal at my son’s school:
“Dear Parents,
I just received final clarification about the President’s Address Tuesday. Per the Superintendent, [the school] will be showing the speech live. If parents do not wish to have their child view the speech, they will need to contact their homeroom teacher. Alternative activities will be in place for those students.
I apologize for the previous email. I am just trying to accommodate all stakeholders at [school].
Sincerely,
Principal McPrincipalson, Ed.D.”
What a shit storm over nothing. Wish they would send me a list of those who hold their kids out, though, as I would have reservations about their mental stability and would like to avoid play dates with them.
The following is a note from my son’s school’s principal, via the PTA. . .
“Dear [name of Elementary School] Families,
As you may be aware, President Obama is scheduled to address the nation’s
schoolchildren on Tuesday. However, [our school] will be postponing the
viewing to later in the week. I will be sending a letter home on Tuesday
explaining the details and giving parents the option of allowing or not
allowing their child to view the address.
Thanks and enjoy the rest of the holiday.
Principal McPrincipalson, Ed.D.
Principal
School Name Elementary
—
As a PTA membership benefit and an important communication tool, you have received this email directly from the [school name] PTA.”
Seriously? Glad to know that the powers that be at my child’s school are caving to a bunch of hysterical nut jobs.
Here’s the thing: If you don’t want your child to watch it, keep your child out of school that day. And in the future, please refrain from throwing around the old “that’s not patriotic” charge; In my opinion, if you are refusing to let your child hear a message from the President of our country, you are showing disrespect to the office of the President. Who’s unpatriotic now?
Yeah, my kid will be there. I refuse to teach my child that it is okay to refuse to listen to someone else’s viewpoint. I will teach my kid that it is required that he show respect to the highest office in the United States.
Storm Troopers and Sand People on Peachtree before noon. Listening to one of my favorite authors speak after a lunch over beer. Pouring myself the first Bloody Mary of the football season. Today is one of those stellar days.
Here’s hoping the Bulldogs keep my momentum going. . . .