"don't cry about it."

yesterday, st. patrick's day, was ernie's birthday. grandma thought he was lying about his age. the brothers and father and husband ate humongous pieces of carrot cake (ernie's pick, of course) frosted high with shiny cream cheese frosting. henry poked his and asked for an apple. grandma had two mid-sized pieces, which means she ate more than anyone else.

before the cake ernie and i heard the technology savvy yet near tone deaf group, the westwind brass. the people who hosted the concert were celebrating fifty years of local concerts featuring crowd-pleasing classical music and light jazz. toward the end of the music a woman loudly hissed/shouted, "i can't find my house keys!" the woman behind us snorted her cigarette laugh at the tuba player's jokes about multiple divorces. as we went out the door we were given twix bars with "fifty years of community concerts!" stickers taped to them. we were two of the eight or nine people in the building under thirty years of age. i felt bad that when this generation of community concert lovers and goers dies the community concert will die with them. unless we can do something about it.

which raised an interesting question between ernie and me as we booked it through the grass to the car, in the car through the town, to get back to cake and sleeping jude and red faced, pajama-ed busy henry. when you go to classical or jazz concerts in big cities most of the audience are young people, twenties to forties. perhaps there are not as many eighty year old pink haired ladies in big cities. when a music teacher's sphere of influence is limited to a thirty minutes lesson in a week, a listening assignment here and there, recitals, etc., how can this music teacher pass on a zeal for something other than mainstream, radio station music? not to cast a slur on any other listening interests, or to say that everything else is somehow a lesser form of music, but to say, how can we pass on a spark of music that's not chintzy or sleazy? for instance, jazz that's really jazz, not just people pretending to produce jazz.

i could see last night why people shut their ears to classical music, why they find it blase. the musicians themselves played the old music apologetically. the tuba player said that all of bach's music was somber, serious, the result of composing in dark churches. i was sick to my stomach. the tanned, note-cracking trumpeter said, "now, it's time for the jazz!" which may not have been so bad if they had been incredible jazz musicians. if the musicians themselves are mediocre at best and hand out apologies for the music they're playing, how can they expect the audience to feel about it? no wonder the community concert will die with the ancient, permed, large-bottomed women passing out twix bars and clicking their tongues against their dentured teeth.

we have a tradition in my family to stretch a birthday into multiple days of celebration. we had pizza and presents on wednesday night with my parents. on the actual birthday we had the concert and cake. and tonight my parents are taking us out and we're going to stuff our faces with meat. sick.

my mom knocked on the door yesterday morning with a handful of these:



we've been spending the last few days dirtying ourselves, fingernails, cheeks and knees, under sunshine and tree branch. and the house is starting to look like the pit-stop it's become. i feel like dusting and organizing and vacuuming and folding and spritzing with windex. but, more so, i feel like rolling around in the grass.