So I Just Happened to Be Thinking

This weekend I cashed in a Christmas gift from my husband: two wonderful tickets to the Indigo Girls with the Kansas City symphony. I took my sister, of course. I heard The Wood Song, which I had hoped to hear. The Indigo Girls with their layered two-part harmony is the perfect accompaniment to a multi-layered symphony, and really I wish for every singer to have such an opportunity to be accompanied by classically trained musicians. It must truly be amazing.

But beyond their talent, I was struck, as I always am, by their songwriting. Both Emily and Amy featured a song they had written recently while they just happened to be thinking about dying blackbirds and the macabre nature of children's nursery rhymes or the intersection of prayer rugs and tanks. That someone could be that aware and also that talented both musically and literally really blows my mind.

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Today my daughter was afflicted with existential angst, as is occurring more and more in her tenth year of life. She asks me what to do when she is sad for no reason, and I don't know how to explain what to do when one realizes the rotation of the earth and all the animals that fell extinct before us. It's easier to wait for a commercial break. But there are some of us unfortunate ones who sense the underpinnings of all that came before. So I just tell her to breathe, and something about hormones. I'll tell her the rest when she's old enough to know.

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Tonight I watched a special on Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. Seeing where they are now is enough. Really, seeing where any of us ends up is enough. We should worry more about where we end up.

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Today I had to put myself in time-out. I'd had enough of being made fun of for any number of various things, and looking forward to another week of single parenthood without Beloved with the temperatures falling sub-zero just pissed me the fuck off. I'm tired of winter, and I'm tired of parenting and working alone, and I'm tired of pretending like it doesn't matter because I'm super-cool. I'm not. I'm married, and single parenthood sucks, and I didn't sign up for this. But this is the new economy, and we should all be happy we have jobs.

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The moon is really beautiful tonight. So there's that. And maybe that is enough.