Tunesday : Smooth

Smooth

(Shur, I / Thomas, R) Performed by Santana, featuring Rob Thomas

Man, it's a hot one
Like seven inches from the midday sun
Well, I hear you whisper and the words melt everyone
But you stay so cool

My muñequita,
My Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa
You're my reason for reason
The step in my groove, yeah.

And if you said, "This life ain't good enough."
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Because you're so smooth

And it's just like the ocean under the moon
It's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of loving that can be so smooth, yeah.
Gimme your heart, make it real
Or else forget about it

Well, I'll tell you one thing
If you would leave it'd be a crying shame
In every breath and every word
I hear your name calling me out

Well I'm from the barrio,
You hear my rhythm on your radio
You feel the turning of the world so soft and slow
Turning you 'round and 'round

And if you said, "This life ain't good enough."
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Because you're so smooth

And it's just like the ocean under the moon
It's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of loving that can be so smooth, yeah.
Gimme your heart, make it real
Or else forget about it

And it's just like the ocean under the moon
It's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of loving that can be so smooth, yeah.
Gimme your heart, make it real
Or else forget about it

Or else forget about it
Or else forget about it
Oh, let's don't forget about it
(Gimme your heart, make it real)
Let's don't forget about it
Let's don't forget about it
Let's don't forget about it
Let's don't forget about it
Let's don't forget about it

I have to say: I love this song; the Latin guitar, the sexy tone to Rob Thomas' voice, the slow build to losing control vocally - I've seen Thomas perform it live, twice, and it puts my heart aflutter. More than just the listening experience, however, is the shared singing experience I've had with this song with my daughters - it has been part of the background soundtrack of nearly their entire lives, and as they've grown, it has been more and more fun to sing along with them; definitely a song that gets turned up when it comes on the radio, the three of us can't help ourselves but belt it out together. I remember being in Nova Scotia one summer, visiting my parents and driving somewhere with my Mum, and the girls were so little and they sang so big when this song came on the radio - when it was over, Mum turned to me and said, "That was incredible. You know that, right?" I do. It was. They are incredible, and I just love any opportunity to bask in my girls' shine. There's nothing thematically relevant about this song this week, it's simply an integral part of my soundtrack; one of my favourite songs from 1999, which is where I am in the timeline.

So, 1999 dawned, and as I wrote last time, we had a little more money and that just made me want...more. September of that year was when Kennedy was to start Junior Kindergarten (at barely four, so young!), and while that was an exciting prospect, when we went to the local school to sign her up, I was really not impressed by the look of this old, crumbling building; I was imagining asbestos and lead paint and a downtrodden vibe to match the atmosphere of neglect (Mallory later had a friend who grew up going to that school and he said that it was rough - gangs and fights and shake downs - so I don't think my instincts were wrong.) This is what made me want to move - there was a brand new school (opened in 1998) just a few blocks away (and slightly closer to the highway for Dave), and finding an affordable house in that neighbourhood became my dream. Incidentally: at the same time I started thinking about moving, our Newfie friends in the townhouse next to us were having a house built in a brand new subdivision - adjacent to the elementary school that I didn't want Kennedy to go to. This was very affordable housing and I could see that our options were going to be: being able to afford one of the nicest houses in a low income neighbourhood (as Mallory's friend grew up in) or one of the smallest houses in a more impressive neighbourhood. Getting Kennedy into that brand new school really was my hope, so I was more than willing to just get a foot in the door, any way we could.

A real estate agent just happened to cold call us as we began to wonder if we could even afford to move, so we agreed to let him come over and give us an estimate on our home. When this guy showed up, we could see right away that he was a shark: someone was going to get screwed in any transaction he was involved with, and he wouldn't care if it was us or the other guy. He was obviously not that impressed with our little townhouse, but since Dave had added a fence and a deck, as well as mostly finishing the basement since we moved in just over two years earlier, we weren't interested in his "lowball to sell quickly" strategy. I don't know if I exactly remember the numbers, but I think we bought that place for 99k and this agent wanted to list at 105; we knew that comparables were listed higher, but this guy was all about quick sales - even if it screwed us over. Interesting fact: I remember him telling us that the street he lives on is a school district dividing line and the kids on opposite sides of the street are sent to different schools. It was very strange when I recognised him as someone who lives on the street we would move onto six years later - he would become our neighbour and I don't think he has ever recognised me or Dave as people who hadn't hired him. (Oddly: several houses have gone up for sale on our little cul-de-sac in the time we've lived here, and no one has used this guy as their agent. I don't think he would have to do much - keep putting flyers in the mailboxes, make a public point of contributing extra to our annual street fireworks display, be out there talking with neighbours every chance he got - in order to lock down the business on this street. He may act like a shark, but he's not a very good one.)

In the end, we used an agent who was a friend of Dave's mother's cousin, and she listed the townhouse at 120k; such a much nicer number (I think we accepted an offer of 119?). With that bit of profit and Dave qualifying for a bigger mortgage, it didn't take me long to find just what I was looking for: a modest home (three bedroom, two bath; 1500 square feet on two stories with an unfinished basement) on a street just a short walk to the brand new school (I think we paid 167k in the end for it; quite a jump and the absolute limit of our budget). We could only afford this place because it had sat on the market for a while - with ugly colours and terrible sponge-painting in the main hallway - but Dave and I were ecstatic to be moving up and leaving the fairly busy street the townhouse had been on: the first night we slept at the new house, we were woken up by birdsong in the morning and it wasn't until then that we realised we had been living in a place without birds around; this was a step up in every way. 

All of this real estate talk is really a preamble for this: Dave and I brought the girls along when we met with the lawyer to sign the papers for the transaction. He was an older man, grey-haired and frumpy, and as soon as we sat down, he smiled at Kennedy and Mallory (three and not quite one), and then looked at Dave and said, "Two girls, eh? I guess you'll just need to keep trying for a boy." I swear I could have just stormed out if I didn't think we were tied to this guy; who the hell did he think he was? Saying something like that in front of my girls? That may be an older man's idea of a joke, but screw him. Dave and I proceeded with the meeting coldly.

And that's why I put that picture up at the header - I bought that plaque on some trip to Nova Scotia, wanting the girls to have visual proof in their home that being girls is special and just exactly what we would have wanted them to be. I know I wrote before that when I was born, my father looked at brand new me then turned to my mother and said, "Well, you got your girl." To which my mother immediately replied, "Who said I wanted a girl?" This is meant to be a hilarious story, but it's one I've always found painful; don't for a second believe that this wasn't the dominant theme of my childhood. The equivalent hilarious story attending Dave's birth is that, as his Dad paced the expectant father's waiting room, he periodically watched a nurse filling out a chalkboard as babies arrived one by one: Mrs Smith - boy. Mrs Brown - boy. Mrs Johnson - boy. Dave's Dad, half-jokingly, asked the nurse if she could go into the delivery room and urge his wife to hurry up before they ran out of boys. Hilarious. But that was the 60s - the last hurrah for sexist dinosaurs - and my daughters were born in the 90s, so things must have changed, right? Happily, in my home, they had.

Despite both of my brothers unashamedly admitting that they would have been devastated if their firstborns hadn't been boys (okay, they were raised by sexist dinosaurs, but come on), Dave has always said that he didn't need a son - these girls are exactly all the family that we need. And I will say this: I would have happily taken a boy or a girl both times I went into labour. Kennedy was handed to me - It's a girl! - perfect; this is just what I want. Mallory was handed to me - It's a girl! - perfect; this is just what I want. Once we were a family of four, Dave and I then had to evaluate the big picture - just how many kids did we want? Money had been so much tighter than we had expected - even diapers and formula were a stretch to the budget - and now that we could breathe again, we didn't know if we could afford another baby; if it wouldn't be better to have a bit more to invest in the kids we already had. And to me the even bigger picture was: if we had one more baby and it was a boy, or two more babies and they came girl then boy, and then we were done, I would never want anyone to think that we kept going until we got what we really wanted. If we had one more baby and it was girl, that would put Mallory in the unfortunate Jan Brady position (which is actually the birth position my own nutty mother was in until her two younger brothers came along much later; which could only have further contributed to her nuttiness), and I didn't want to do that to Mal. Discussing all of this with Dave, he said, "I honestly don't think anything is missing from our lives. This family feels whole and complete, I love it just the way it is." And so we were complete; nuts to anyone who jokes it takes a manchild to make a family; belting out Smooth with my two girls is such a perfect experience of joy that I can't imagine our lives unfolding any other way.