Tag Archives: music

I’m counting down…

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Two and a half more weeks, and I have every excuse in the book to stuff my face with pie. And I will. Oh, I so will.

My extended family is large, and all (close to fifty) of us come together in one house for Thanksgiving. It’s crowded not only with bodies but also with love. It’s sick; really, it is. All of the cousins count down together as if it’s what we have waited for our entire year. And that’s not entirely untrue. It’s an occasion for us all to “take a sip” each time Aunt Ruth makes us roll our eyes (she is delightfully crude and delightful at the same time). But most of all, it’s the one time of year where we all come together.

Before my grandfather passed away, we got together around Christmas time as well. For several years after that, we tried to carry on the tradition without him, but those days seemed to have died right along with him (and his famous Christmas morning Norwegian “monkies”… cardamom is the tits), and we lost it altogether when my grandmother passed. The consensus deemed Christmas “too difficult” for us to get together.

Christmas was always my grandmother’s favorite holiday. She went all out. Her trees were always something to inspire jaw droppage, but it wasn’t just the tree. It was the elaborate presents around the tree, sparkling with huge ribbons and ornaments hanging off of them, the house littered with her collection of Santa Claus statues and figurines. In fact, she had an entire room dedicated to crafting these occasions. We called it “the hobby room.” I was allergic to that damn “hobby room,” (stupid eucalyptus!) and every year I got stuck in it sniffling and scratching out my eyeballs, but it didn’t matter when I walked out into the living room and saw everyone there.

When my grandfather was around, he loved to have music playing at all times. Blasting. My cousins and I would dance around their big open living room overseeing the lake. We crashed into each other and swung each other around while big band orchestra music played on the speaker system until we fell dizzy on the floor. My aunts and uncles played tunes on his giant organ that permeated the entire house. My musical prodigy of a cousin would play his sax until everyone wept around the room. When my grandparents gifted my family a keyboard, my uncle quickly ran away with it and locked himself in a room to play it while we yelled, tears rolling down our cheeks, and pounded on the door.

The last time my extended family had music around them at a gathering was when we welcomed my uncle’s Austrian family to the states and danced together in the backyard to a live band (ah, nostalgia!), but never again during the holidays. Well, I’m over it. I want it back! I don’t care if Aunt Ruth has to say a million and one asinine things to get us snockered enough for us all to get us back on our feet again; it will happen.

So, I’m counting down the days till I can stuff my face again with pies, and conjure the memory of my grandmother and grandfather through music and dancing, once again. I think they’d like that.

The Music Downstairs.

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Go to Sleep

Go to Sleep (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had never heard the song before that night.  My right ear was on the ground, my body, eager to hear the words, was parallel to his vibrating ceiling where he looked up every night.  I shut my eyes, reached my arm up to the bed and dragged the quilt over me, careful not to lift my ear from the floor for one second.  I had only seen him once.  Sitting on the steps, cigarette in his mouth, between a short man and a tall man.  He was medium height, and they looked like they had a cellular-bar seating arrangement.

“How many bars do you have?”

“Always three.”

His hair was messy.  His short beard, messier.  His eyes brown and not very still.

The next morning, I walked to my first college course with my roommate.  It felt like someone was following me, but it was almost never who I’d hoped it would be.  I ignored who it was, until the brown eyes crawled on my back, I imagined, through my blouse to the carpet indention on my skin.  My face flushed, and my roommate forced me to turn around.  His beard smiled, and he introduced himself.  Even though it was who I had hoped, I allowed my roommate to do all the talking.

I heard the music again that night along with two other voices, and my roommate asked me to come with her downstairs to let ourselves in.  She was always more bold.  I voiced hesitation, though she never allowed anyone to say ‘no.’  Her voice invited everyone she met to declare, as though they were the first, “You should be a phone sex operator!”  Along with the size of her breasts, she was every college man’s fantasy, but truth be told, she scared the wits out of them.  After that night, his door was never locked.

Between undressing his records, he droned on about Interpol, Morrissey, and Billy Corgan, and how I was missing out.  I told him I wasn’t.  I liked Radiohead.  The next day, I purchased the Radiohead poster I had eyed for a year and hung it above my bed.  Then, I put my ear to the ground when I turned out the light.

His tall friend followed me upstairs one night, after my roommate and I let ourselves in.  He pulled his long, awkward body on my bed, the only seating arrangement I owned.  His calves dangled off the edge like undercooked spaghetti.  While pointing his finger at my new Radiohead poster, he invited me to lie next to him, and said, “Nice.  Good girl.”  He adjusted so that his face was closer to mine, and I invited him to go back downstairs.  I could hear Morrissey crooning faintly downstairs, aiding middle man’s sleep.

Middle man poured me my first glass of whiskey, and for some time, I stared at the same ceiling, the vibrations inviting movement, for the first time.

And now, I always listen to the music downstairs.