Tunesday : Buddy Holly

Buddy Holly

(Written by Rivers Cuomo, Performed by Weezer)

What's with these homies, dissing my girl?
Why do they gotta front?
What did we ever do to these guys
That made them so violent?
Woo-hoo, but you know I'm yours
Woo-hoo, and I know you're mine
Woo-hoo, and that's for all time 

Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care bout that 

Don't you ever fear, I'm always near
I know that you need help
Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit
You need a guardian
Woo-hoo, and you know I'm yours
Woo-hoo, and I know you're mine
Woo-hoo, and that's for all time 

Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care bout that
I don't care bout that 

Bang, bang a knock on the door
Another big bang and you're down on the floor
Oh no! What do we do?
Don't look now but I lost my shoe
I can't run and I can't kick
What's a matter babe are you feeling sick?
what's a matter, what's a matter, what's a matter you?
What's a matter babe, are you feeling blue? oh-oh!
And that's for all time
And that's for all time 

Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care bout that
I don't care bout that
I don't care bout that
I don't care bout that

Over this past Christmas, my father-in-law was telling Kennedy that he remembered when they came out to Edmonton to visit us after she was first born: we had gone somewhere, and when she started fussing, "only he could soothe her". So Grandpa took the newborn from me and started bouncing her around, probably singing Popo the Puppet to her for the first time, and when someone asked him the baby's name, he told her "Kennedy". This young woman smiled playfully and said, "Like the president?" And according to Grandpa, it was me who piped up, "No, like the airport. We're big fans." Big laughs for the story, and after the inlaws were gone, I elaborated for my girls: When Kennedy's grandparents came out to visit, I was still exhausted from childbirth and the night and day caring for a newborn, but being avid tourists, they didn't want to sit around the house, and I was obliged to go along wherever they wanted to go; visiting the mall (despite my fears that we'd be exposing Kennedy to whatever germs might be there), wherever else that I don't remember now, and in the story that Grandpa was sharing, down to Fort Edmonton Park. I remember how fussy Kennedy had become in the heat and crowd, and just as I was looking around for somewhere private to breastfeed her, my father-in-law was taking my baby from my arms and dancing her around; as though I didn't know what she wanted. This was incredibly frustrating for me - I wanted Dave's parents, who had come from so far away, to have this bonding time with their first grandchild, but I was her mother and I figured I knew what she needed. This episode is not exactly filed in my own memory as the funny story that my father-in-law recounted (but I would never correct his memory that he had the magic touch at soothing my screaming babies; that's a beautiful thing for him to have, and he did always want to try) but I will point out that it was Dave who quipped that we named our daughter after the JFK airport; and anyone who knows Dave would know that that had to have been him (but if my father-in-law wants to remember that I was funny once, I'll let him have that, too, lol).

That seems like a long intro to get to the point of this week's song choice. I was looking through the top songs of 1995, the year Kennedy was born, and Buddy Holly stood out as an obvious favourite from those days; and especially because of the music video that Dave and I, who never sat around watching music videos, loved at the time; the retro vibe, the Happy Days setting (a show both of us watched religiously as children in the 70s) - this totally made a California punk-pop band like Weezer accessible to a couple of squares like us. Reading the lyrics this morning, however, made me realise that I never really knew the words beyond the chorus; I had no idea that this upbeat-sounding song was actually about the L.A. race riots of 1992. And that made it even more apropos, because beyond me identifying, in a literal sense, with lines like "Don't you ever fear, I'm always near" as I'm thinking about the first year of Kennedy's life, there's also an appropriate metaphorical tie-in this week: Despite playing at adult roles (wife, homeowner, college grad, new mother), I didn't really feel like a grownup yet in those days; I certainly wasn't politically engaged enough tell the difference between a pop tune and a protest song, and this obliviousness captures something essential about this transitional time in my life. So, although I had fast-forwarded to late 1996 in the last Tunesday post I wrote tracing the timeline of my life , I'm going to rewind here, going back over that first year of motherhood again and how I finally came to feel like a grownup.

As I've written before, we planned for our first baby to be born soon after I graduated from college, but it took a few months to become pregnant, so I had something like five months of idle time at home between school ending and Kennedy's birth. Despite Dave working hard - being laid off, finding a new job, giving it his all - I was totally lazy at this time: me and my big tummy out walking my big dog, Mo, in the spring and summer sunshine; sprawling out on the couch doing crosswords and starring favourites in the baby name book; watching Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake on TV, knowing my own little family would never be that crass. (My mother and I joked that after my baby was born, we should concoct a farout intergenerational abuse story in order to have one of these tabloid shows fly us all out to California for a show taping. I wondered later if any of these apparently disturbed families were actually playing along for a free trip in precisely this way.) I was sitting around lazily watching TV in the middle of one day, when whatever crap show I was watching was interrupted by live reports from the Oklahoma City bombing, and I was transfixed and absolutely horrified. This was years before 9/11, and the idea of a bombing attack on innocent civilians on U.S. soil was positively unthinkable. I was hormonal and large with my first baby, and the reports of the dead children in the government building's daycare centre set me to wailing with empathetic loss; I cannot overstate how personal I took this tragedy; how I felt myself standing on the sidewalk alongside all those frantic parents wondering if their own children made it out alive. And in the weeks of CNN coverage that followed, as the so-called motivations of the perpetrators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were examined and dissected (it was a protest against the Waco raids, it was in retribution for what McVeigh was made to participate in as a soldier during the first Gulf War, it was a false flag attack, they were government patsies) I didn't care about motivations or root-causes or this event's place in the arc of history; I reacted like a scared child, like witness to, rather than a participant in, society, and feeling like I had brushed against the face of evil, I turned away. 

CNN was in its heyday at this time - in addition to the Oklahoma City bombing, this was the year of O.J.'s trial; and while most people I knew couldn't get enough of watching every little detail, I didn't get the appeal: I assumed O.J. had committed the murders and would be convicted, whether or not I was watching. I preferred the simplicity of daytime trash TV shows, and that's what I continued to watch.

So, Kennedy was born, the inlaws came out and we visited Fort Edmonton Park, and in late September we flew to Ontario for my older brother's wedding. While we were there, my parents had their TV constantly tuned to CNN for the O.J. trial; Dad was totally obsessed, and Ma talked like she kept it on for Dad, but she watched it all day, too; filling him in on all the details he missed while he was at work. Eventually, while Dave and I were back in Edmonton and putting our house up for sale, O.J. was acquitted, and this was the first that the case actually gripped my attention: Why were Black people around the world cheering this result, while the white people were gobsmacked? How was supposedly blind justice - and especially in this case, with the new and incontrovertible introduction of DNA evidence that put O.J. at the scene - manipulated by high priced lawyers and subject to racial divides? I certainly had seen the Rodney King video years before, and cringed at the L.A. riots that followed (and especially the truck driver who was pulled from his cab and beaten for being in the wrong place at the wrong time), but I never understood the history of police abuse behind those events, or understood the level of African-American anger and paranoia that it fostered: Did the Black community really believe that L.A. cops would think nothing of planting evidence against one of their own, O. J.? Were their minds never open to even the possibility that O.J. did it? And if they knew he might have done it, were they simply relieved that he got away with it; score one against the crooked cops? Again, I just didn't see this event in its moment in history; I was an immature citizen of the world; still not a full-on grownup.

We sold our house in Edmonton and moved to Ontario, where we divided our time between my parents' house and Dave's parents' house, usually apart; it is really tough to feel like a grownup when you're back living under your parents' roof. The one story that usually gets told about this time was when Kennedy got constipated and we had to take her to the hospital for a little baby enema (Mallory, in particular, likes having this story to use against her big sister). The full back story would include the sad tale of the death of one of Dave's cousins when he was a little boy (his unfit mother of an Aunt Marie had let her own young daughter cry out for hours from constipation until her overfilled intestines literally burst and poisoned her), so when Kennedy was uncomfortable and I noted that she seemed to have a big mass to pass that just wouldn't come out (if I removed her diaper to give her room when I saw her start to grunt, I could see the big, hard poop peek out and retreat, peek out and retreat, and her face would go nearly purple with effort before finally giving up), everyone remembered the little girl who had died of constipation, and Dave's family began to panic. 

My mother-in-law bought a giant bottle of prune juice and wanted me to drink the whole thing - Kennedy was just a couple of months old, took in nothing but breast milk, and I suppose the thinking was that the laxative effects would pass from me to her through the milk. All I (who had never drank prune juice before) could think was that I would probably get explosive diarrhea from drinking the whole thing (humiliating even to think of while staying with my inlaws), and I couldn't imagine the science behind how the fiber (which I assumed was the laxative property of prune juice?) would pass from me to her; I demurred from drinking the whole thing, and that didn't go over well. My father-in-law brought home baby suppositories, and while Dave did manage to put one into Kennedy to no effect, I didn't want to keep trying that (I had read before about how anorexics screw up their digestive systems with laxatives and suppositories; that if you start using a stimulant like this, your intestines stop doing the work on their own, and I didn't want to risk that with a newborn, even if my science was dodgy). My sister-in-law brought home prune baby food, but I didn't want Kennedy to get a taste for its sweetness and start to refuse the breast when she was far too young to make the leap to solids. Everyone was concerned, for good reason, and even though Dave and I were also concerned and had no idea what to do for Kennedy, I wanted us to be the ones in charge of any plans or interventions; we couldn't even talk without someone offering advice. (This may sound like we let a potentially dangerous situation drag on, but I don't think we were in "crisis mode" for more than a couple of days of constipation.) 

Eventually, we called my inlaws' doctor's office for advice, and the nurse we spoke with said that we could bring Kennedy in any time for an exam if we were concerned. We made an appointment for later the same day, and went to the hospital because that's where their doctor's practise happened to be. Dr. Dickey felt Kennedy's hard tummy, assured us we weren't unnecessarily panicked or neglectfully late in seeking treatment, and he recommended a small and gentle enema as a quick fix. Like with the suppository, I was concerned about messing with Kennedy's digestive system, but being more concerned for her immediate comfort, we agreed. The nurse came in with the enema kit, we removed Kennedy's diaper, and although her eyes went wide with fright and shock when the hose was first inserted and the warm water started to fill her up, Kennedy's cries cut off midstream when a huge amount of waste started rushing out of her; the nurse caught what she could in the opened diaper, and quickly grabbed some towels to catch the ensuing, endless stream. Kennedy - eyes wide open, mouth a hugely round but silent O - began to laugh with relief as the tears that had threatened began to track down her cheeks, and I cried and laughed with relief as well. We had survived our first child's first health crisis, and I kind of resented that Dave's whole family was there as well; I knew that Kennedy belonged to them, too, that they had particular cause to worry about this particular problem, but I didn't feel like I had had the space to be the parent; to be the grownup. (And despite Mallory making much of Kennedy "not knowing how to poop when she was a baby", this was a one time thing.)

When we first moved back, it was for some reason assumed that we'd be staying with Dave's parents - his Mom, who had her own room, made a production of moving into their guest room and pointed out that she had cleared out her dresser for me to unpack into. I protested - surely we wouldn't be living there that long; I never did unpack - and I really would have preferred the guest room; to underline that we were temporary guests. But, the bigger room was pressed upon us, meaning that many times as I was getting dressed or otherwise indisposed, my mother-in-law would breeze in to grab something; never knocking, and why would she? It was her room. One time I was stretched out on the bed, breastfeeding Kennedy, and Bev came bursting in in tears, saying that her good friend Evelyn had just died. There I was, head propped on my fist, a novel from her bookshelf fanned open in my free hand, exposed ankles crossed, Kennedy tucked into blankets in front of me that obscured what I was actually up to, and as I awkwardly remained in my reclined position, gesturing feebly to Kennedy with the book and not wanting to get up and expose myself, I offered some lame words of comfort from where I was until Bev left. I knew I handled that terribly - we were the only ones in the house at the time and she had no one else to talk to; I didn't even get up and give her a hug; I couldn't - but I felt helpless and useless. I didn't want to be there anymore. (As an aside in an already too long post, I'll note that in my review of Stoner, I said that I was an adult before I finally read a book that made me "get" fiction. And that book was The Fire-Dwellers; a novel I grabbed from my mother-in-law's bookshelf as I breastfed Kennedy on her bed. This epiphany was a marker on the road to true adulthood for me.) Once Dave decided to take some courses at the University instead of seeking full time employment, I decided to start spending the weekdays at my own parents' house; and if I felt like a child at my inlaws', it was worse moving back in with my own parents; there was definitely a reason why I moved away from them in the first place.

Besides me resenting my mother being present and somehow taking credit for all of Kennedy's first year milestones (from insisting on preparing her first bite of pablum to photographing her first steps), the nuttiness that is my family of origin crescendoed the following summer, when my parents had a big fight and Dad drove away; leaving me, Kennedy, and my mother behind in the woods of Nova Scotia. I can't find where I wrote about that before, or I'd include a link, but I know I didn't write what came next: When we got back to Ontario, after Dave was sent to drive a car and some cash down to us and we pretended like everything was normal and continued with my inlaws coming to visit us, and a sidetrip to PEI on the way back home, Dad knew that my Mum would be angry, and he had cleared out. (He apparently had taken a room at a crappy motel, but with his small boat anchored nearby, he spent some nights sleeping on it.) At this time, Kyler was working nearby and had moved into our parents' house in order to save up a down payment for his first house, Ken and Lolo had moved in while their nearby house was being built, and since Dave had started working in Mississauga, he moved in while we figured out where we were going to live. With all of us there, there were many fretful evenings as Mum said that that was it, she and Dad were over, and with the side conversations with my brothers ("What are we supposed to do in all this?"), and the information coming back from Dad (Ken was in contact with him anyway) none of it felt like any of my business, and we were living jumbled all on top of each other, the atmosphere was frantic and confusing, and it was exactly like being a helpless little kid in my parents' menacing house again; how was I here again and how did I lead my baby to this nuthouse? This was not how a grownup lives and I couldn't believe that Dave wasn't moving heaven and earth to get us out of there. (In the end, Dad moved back within a couple of weeks, having decided that although my mother was nuts, he had made her that way and he was willing to take responsibility for her. Mum believed that she was being magnanimous in giving him another chance. None of this is any of my business.)

Dad did not like having all of us there, and he let it be known. Ken and Lolo were storing some furniture in the garage, and one day, Dad took the tarp off of the antique buffet that Lolo's grandfather had given her and used it to sort a can of screws and bolts; scratching up the entire top of it. We had four extra cars between us, too many for the driveway, and Dad insisted on them all being parked in an empty lot at the end of the cul-de-sac, despite a handful of parking tickets. And ultimately, Dad came home with a bank cheque for Dave, a contract for him to sign saying that he would eventually pay that sum back, and the number for a real estate agent: We had been loaned the down payment on a house without asking for it - since we had spent the last year living off all that we had - and we were to (haha, "jokingly") get the hell out. 

I glossed over the details of what came next when I wrote this before, but it was a nice story: We met with Dad's real estate agent, and she showed us some properties (apartments and condos) around Mississauga, and in a financial stretch for us, she showed us a townhouse in Milton that we could only afford because the single mother who lived there was losing her home to the bank (when we went to view it, this Mom's protest involved staying home and noisily cooking dinner for all the little kids running around, glaring at us through greasy bangs, and having dirty laundry and dog crap all over the carpets. I felt for her - why would she clean up for opportunists like us just as she was losing everything? - and while I didn't want to profit from her situation, I was more concerned about the condition she would leave the place in; what she might do down the line to take revenge on us.) The internet was fairly new then, but Dave and I tried to explore other options, and in a lucky break, we found a listing in Cambridge; exactly halfway between his parents and mine; with easy access to the highway and Dave's job. We called the agent and she agreed to meet us there, and probably wanting us to move along faster in our house search, Dad offered to drive us. We got to Cambridge early and Dad toured us along the main commercial strip and to the city's beautiful old downtown core, the whole time talking up what a nice city he thought it was. We went to the nearby Tim Hortons for a coffee and a doughnut (I remember Dad laughing at my request for an extra large double double - and I have no idea if he thought it was funny that I'd want an extra large when he was buying, or if it was the "double double" part before that became common Canadian slang). We met Leslie at the townhouse and it was perfect: only a year old, freehold with no condo fees, this was a quick sale for a couple that just had a baby of their own and had already transferred back to the place in Manitoba that they had originally come from. The home was small but new, we could just afford it, we liked the city and its location, and under pressure from Dad to commit, we made the offer right then (Dad even wrote a cheque for the deposit because we didn't have a chequebook with us, haha). We stayed up late as the offer and counteroffer were faxed back and forth and we were moved in within a few weeks.

That townhouse was our first step into the Cambridge real estate market, and although we've moved twice since then, every time we drive past it now, I can point to that (now aging and sadly neglected) home and say, "That's it. That's where I finally became an adult; a fully functioning, politically engaged grownup who began to think in terms of the larger community and my own moment in history." I finally had my own home again to take care of, and finally, Dave and I could be in charge of taking care of our little family; we were the grownups in charge; the wall between our children and the world that might want to harm them. That's no small thing, and I didn't think it would make sense to move on with my story without noting the transition. And to think it took Weezer to make me think about that today.

Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care bout that