Friday, October 9, 2015

You're My Angel

Good god, what a day.
We all got over to Jessie's and the little man had a horrible rash on his face. Now yes, newborns are famous for their rashes but this one looked pretty angry and long story short, Jessie and Vergil and August did not go to lunch with us but went to Urgent Care under the advice of their midwife and after waiting for about four hours, got a diagnosis of impetigo which seems highly bizarre to me but I ain't a doctor. Anyway, it was stressful for all concerned and I even cried, thinking of Jessie and Vergil in the Urgent Care with their newborn and of course I offered to come and be with them but Jessie thanked me and said they had it together and I knew they did but if there is such a thing as grandmother hormones, I have them and that's all there is to it.

So Hank and Lily and Gibson and I went to lunch at a very good Chinese buffet and then I took Hank home and Lily went to get Owen. I bought shoes and did a little other shopping and then went to Costco and then got gas at the Costco and then went to the library and dropped off books and then to Publix.
So that's like a week's worth of in-town stuff for me but I DID NOT DIE!

I got home and saw that the new neighbor was out using a chain saw on bamboo. Hmmm...
I unloaded the car and went over to say howdy. He's a young man. I mean, young. Of course, I'm old so everyone under thirty looks like they're twelve years old to me. But he seems very nice and is vitally interested in nature and bees and native plants and he seems to know a lot about those things and has friends that know even more. He asked if he could use my landline and I told him he could and he came over and I showed him my house and gave him a dozen eggs and a beer and our phone number in case he has any questions. Moving to Lloyd can be daunting. You are in the country but also in a community. He seems at once a bit idealistic (but enthusiastic) and paranoid. He used that word, not me. He's from New Jersey and blames the paranoia on that. I reassured him that we have a very good community here and it is, indeed, a safe place to live. A good place to live. He wants chickens and you know I approve of that. I asked him if he would mind leaving a border of the bamboo between our houses and he said he did not mind at all.
If good fences make good neighbors, bamboo is a neighborly plant. I need to tell him how to kick the sprouts in the spring to prevent the spreading of it where he does not want it.

And so besides all of that, I have put everything away and washed the sheets and made the bed and cleaned up the kitchen and collected ALL THREE EGGS WHICH WERE LAID TODAY (someone is laying somewhere besides the proscribed areas and that's all there is to it) and it's warm and clammy again and I almost want to close the windows and put on the AC but that's stupid and it is supposed to cool down again tomorrow.

And of course, today is John Lennon's birthday and I have been thinking about him all day long.
It's so funny how, until I read Keith Richards' autobiography, I never really gave too much thought to the Stones. I mean, I loved them, they were the greatest rock and roll band of all times but the Beatles were the BEST band of all times and the Beatles were my band. Lennon was my man. When he was murdered, it sent me into a grief which I have never really recovered from. I remember those days following his death as if they were yesterday.
God. What a cliche.
And yet. I do.

I realize now that the Beatles and the Stones were necessarily the yin and the yang of it all back then. As Keith said in his book, if there was a band who had to wear the white hat, there must be a band who wore the black one.

But John was the bridge between.


And I think that eventually the Beatles stifled him. He wasn't content to wear the white hat, to play the sweet boy. He went along with it up to a point even and up to that whole thing with the Maharishi and then he discovered the Maharishi's feet were made of clay and he fell in love with a crazy Japanese artist and he wanted to play different music and he had to bust out, break out, become a junkie, clean up, write and play songs like this.




He had to finally lay it down and cocoon in his apartment in NYC with his wife, grow up, learn to make bread, discover what it meant to be a man, and have a son with Yoko before he could pick it up again and he did and he made one of my favorite albums of all times with his wife, Double Fantasy, and then he was killed.

Double Fantasy changed my life.
Music saved my life. 
Ruby Tuesday saved my life.
I Want To Hold Your Hand saved my life.
Sargent Peppers saved my life.
Beggars Banquet saved my life.
Mother saved my life.




God saved my life and sanity.
I was not the only one.




"I don't believe in death. It's just getting out of one car and getting into another."

Seventy-five. He would have been seventy-five years old today and he's been gone from this reality for thirty years  and yet, he's as real and as present and as beloved to me as anyone could possibly be.

What a day.

Happy birthday, John.





You ain't dead.
You're just in a different car.

Love forever...Ms. Moon

6 comments:

  1. That's a beautiful elegy/eulogy, etc.

    And I'm sorry for August's rash -- I imagine that was pretty scary. I don't know how we all did that parenting thing, but we did.

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  2. Impetigo! I hope they're wrong :( Having to go to hospital at all is nasty, I hope it's all ok. .

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  3. I love that , " you ain't dead, you're just in a different car". I love John Lennon , such a loss. X

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  4. Going to the Dakota in NYC last year choked me up. To think that that was his home and he died right in front of it SO SENSELESSLY, damn near broke my heart.
    The thing with the Stones, they HAD to break the trail in the other way because the Beatles and blazed the shit out of their trail. The fact that the Stones made different, yet equally amazing and prolific music of their own, well, it was a miracle too.
    Music makes the people come together.
    And poor little August! And so it begins. The worries! I hope he's right as rain in no time!

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  5. My son had a bad case of infant acne that emerged a few days after birth. I was given a cream to rub on his skin and told to put a warm washcloth on his cheeks. It cleared up beautifully in a week or so but until it did I was in agony. I rather suspect that might be what August has but I'm not a doctor. Thanks for all the Lennon links!

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  6. Elizabeth- And the damn thing is, as a grandparent, the worry is just as bad. It's never-ending, even though I have complete trust and faith in Jessie and Vergil.

    Jo- We still don't really know, I think.

    Leisha- He was...well. Nothing and no one to compare him to.

    Heartinhand- Yep. Can't have the yin without the yang. And honestly, if one really knew what was going on back then, it might be hard to always discern who was yin and who was yang.
    Thank you on the August wishes.

    Angella- Well, baby acne WAS one of the diagnoses they gave him initially. But this seems to be more than that.

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