Write Your Rock 'N' Roll While You Are Young: An Old-Testament-Style Exhortation

O my daughter, write all your rock ‘n’ roll while you are young.

My kid. This exhortation is for her in 10 years.

Rage, scream, pierce, sulk, defy. I give my blessing for your worst tattoos. I want you to grab the microphone and screech into it. Wear pants that are too tight. Stomp around. Growl at people.

You will never be so safe and free as you are right now. And it is only from this wealth of safety that you can so blithely growl. It is only from the peace of your perfect, unspoiled life that you can stand there, razor-sharp. You can criticize me and everything I stand for. I’m so glad you are that safe.

Change the world. Why not? Defy me to change the world. Get in my face. Write a manifesto.

I remember standing on the basement stairs in the house where I grew up, and my mother was unloading the washing machine. I was challenging her about the morality of the death penalty, not because she disagreed with me, but because she agreed, and that maddened me the more. “If you believe in change, then why don’t you do something about it?” I raged at her. And she stood there, with my clean underwear in her hand. I was so disgusted by her complacency.

Kid, hate me hard while you can. As long as you hate me, you can’t miss me. As long as you are repulsed by my life choices, you can not imagine what it will be like to lose me. I want to be here for you, stupidly steadfast, boring you to death for all your life. I dread the moment when you look at me and realize I will die. Because I know in that moment you will become a little bit quiet and a little bit afraid. Why should you be afraid now? You are so young, no one you need can ever die. It is unthinkable.

So now, write all that brave material that only you can write, sing the songs that that only you can sing, tear down the edifices that only you can muster the sufficient angst to bring yourself to hate. Now while you have not seen sorrow or felt pain, while you are still self-righteous enough to muster indignation. Do it for me, your mother who has been scared stiff.

Me, when I was 19. I knew everything, so it was a good time to be loud.

I remember writing political songs and singing them loudly in public spaces. I said a lot of brazen things. I used the word “America” in songs with a “message.” I stuck my head up high, as high as I could get it, and yelled about indignities and injustice. I hope you do that. I will listen.

O my children, I used to have balls. Balls no more. And the saddest thing is -- it didn’t even take that much to stomp it out of me. I went down hard with a few deaths, some sadness, a little madness. Used to be, the threat of consequences made me laugh. Now, consequences terrify me -- imagined, real, inevitable, yours, mine. I am rigid with it. Put a guitar in my hand, and it cracks.

Because I’m afraid now, I’m quiet. A microphone? Outrage? The stage? It takes everything I have to say anything at all, even in a small voice. It takes everything I have to crawl out from under the bed and say “I’m still here.”

But I want to listen to all your songs, especially the loud ones, the angry ones, the ones that stand outside of memory, that pay no attention to history or the inevitable repetition thereof. I’ll clap. I’ll yell. I’ll be like “That’s my kid! The ignorant one! Look at her! She’s so amazing!”

I am not saying this in scorn and I’m not scoffing at you. I really would love for you to stay like this forever. Just as hot. Just as ignorant. To be able to write that rock ‘n’ roll all your life. To speak for 20-year-olds and to 20-year-olds. Stay so perfect and unassailable and so convinced of your own idea and so untroubled by the weight and the stickiness of reality.

I earnestly hope for you that you will never be able to write anything that is at all relevant to an adult audience. But the world is probably not going to treat us that way.

Me at 40. Acquainted with fear.

I write this to you because I know that time is short. While my hope for you is that you never outgrow your ragged edge, I know you will. You will not be one of those people who still jingle and rage and thrash around when you’re my age. Your heart will break and shatter, and the things that charm you now will not be interesting. You will no longer be able to fit yourself into a mob. You will not be able to be reckless.

I know this because of myself, but also because of you.

Growing up is a trade. You trade in your rock ‘n’ roll but you will get your own spouse, your own children. You will trade in your white water rapids and get a riverbed so deep, a surface so flat, it reflects the sky. I see that in you already. Your time to scream and rage is going to be short. So don’t miss it. Life is a good trade, but you don’t have to make it yet.

When I say “Stop!” to you, understand that it’s what I have to say, and know that it’s your job not to listen. Press on. Do stupid things. Don’t tell me about them. It’s okay, you will live. Don’t worry about who’s listening, or what people will think, or what adults will say. Find friends that really get you and let them become very important. Drive around and do dangerous things and don’t tell me where you are. Tell me, “I’m fine!” and “Back soon!” and “I love you!” Don’t ask my permission, worry about my feelings, bow to my judgment. I’m only your mother. I love you, but I really don’t know anything.

Me at 18. Fearless. About to write a manifesto.

This is twenty year old me that was, writing to twenty year old you that will be: Write your rock ‘n’ roll this year. Set fires you don’t know whether you can put out. Forty year old me can’t tell ten year old you the things that I have done. The bottles smashed, the boys kissed, the cliffs hung from, the trains caught, the words screamed, the people hurt, the ropes cut. I can’t tell you about that because forty year old me is contractually obligated as your mother to hold up a stop sign and say “No more piercings. Home by ten. I want to meet his parents. Call me when you get there or your phone’s confiscated.” That’s my job. And that’s what means that you are safe enough to ignore every one of those restraints and write your rock ‘n’ roll and dangle yourself over those cliffs.

O my children, do the things that can’t be undone. Do the brave, stupid, wild things. Do everything that doesn’t make you die. Write your rock ‘n’ roll while you are young. Time is flying, don’t I know it? But no, this is not a suicide note. I’m happy! To my surprise, at this age it only takes a metal watering can covered in red enamel, with a big brass spout. And to make me whimper, it only takes a truck in an oncoming lane with overly bright lights. I’m not strong anymore. I’m not like you are. But I’m glad I was. Now I write books about it.

Where will you be when you sit down to write your books? When you settle into your deep riverbed? I hope you are panting, and tired, and worn, and I hope you come to your senses smiling and crying and barely holding yourself together. It’s one youth you have. Make much of it. With your warm blood, rock. With your new eyes, roll. When you tell your daughter how you put it all away, give her something to remember.

Would You Friend Your Kids on Facebook?

Some of us parents lead a double life. Not the exciting kind where you end up in Ankara with no recollection of how you got there or why you're wearing only one stiletto, but a double life of the mind. We make our mom faces, wear our mom clothes, and use our mom vocabulary. Even those of us who are "cool moms" create a mom persona -- it doesn't have to be all braided hair and cookie dough. My mom persona is constructed out of different parts: part is my own personality, part is what I think mothers should look and sound like, part is how my mother was, and another part is a new creation -- something that came out of me after my kids came along, that wasn't there before. I like being a mom.

However, I do have a separate piece of my brain that's entirely personal. This piece is a survivor from a time before my children; maybe part single girl, part newlywed, maybe even part teenager. I try to let it change and grow apart from my "mom" self, so that I don't just become the mom and abandon the real me. So that I don't look around when my kids leave for college and realize I have nothing to do but wait for grandchildren. Writing novels is part of that separate piece, and blogging is part of the separate piece (peace?) and recently Facebook, for me and a lot of moms I know, has become part of it.

Yes, we've always had our email lists and phone calls, but there's something about posting OMFG, I need them to be asleep. Must. have. quiet. as one of my friends did recently, that provides instant gratification. You wouldn't write an email to say "Why is it that my children think they need to physically help me open a pack of gum?" But if you Facebook it or Twitter it, you'll have five or six amusing answers within a few minutes, and nowadays really that's all you want. Email has become the new snail mail -- it feels cumbersome, antiquated, and formal, like you need a really good reason to do it, especially to a whole group. Facebook and Twitter is where you go for instant luv now. To shout out to your mom homies, and hear a "hellz yeah" back. Of course, you can't shout out to your mom homies with the children in the room.

But it's not just about complaining about your kids. As more people find and use Facebook, your friend list becomes a synthesis of your entire life. You have high school friends, college friends, ex-boyfriends, professional acquaintances, people who only knew you when you played in a rock band, people who only knew you when you were a cool writer chick, etc. Putting all these people in one place is perplexing enough, without introducing them en masse to your children, who may not know that Mommy wrote a kind of edgy experimental book back in the 90s, who may not see Mom as a rocker, who have no concept of any previous life that Mom may have led, or really anything that existed before they, the children, came into the world.

Which is why you get posts like this, from another friend: I need to post something funny but don't want any speshul snowflaks to see. To which I responded: Whisper it in groanupps langwadj. And another mom added: We must find a way around this... Well, don't we still have email? Don't we still have the telephone? Yeah, we do. But since we've tasted the sweet, sweet nectar of Facebook and Twitter, we can't go back to the old way of doing things. Anyone want to run out and register Mombook.com?

To recap, there are three reasons to NOT friend your kids on Facebook:

1. No more bitching about the kids or reporting the funny things they do/say.
2. Kids get to meet Ralph the pierced stoner and experience all his video posts, then ask me how I know this Ralph guy and what those people are doing with that garden hose.
3. Now I have to edit everything I say to make sure it's safe for the dinner table.

But some of us have kids old enough to have their own Facebook accounts. High schoolers, even. So, are there any reasons TO friend your kids?

1. Know what your kids are up to. This was actually the reason I joined Facebook in the first place, and my first two friends were my two teenaged stepchildren. See -- it works both ways. Maybe someplace on LiveJournal there's a post called "Would You Friend Your Mom on Facebook?"
2. If they ask you to friend them, and you don't friend them, then that feels mean. And it is mean. There's just no way around it. You don't want to say "I won't be your friend" to your child, even if you explain it in the kindest possible way.
3. Maybe, just maybe, it's a good thing for the kids to see their moms in this context.

For example: Yes, Mom has friends. Yes, Mom makes snarky comments about politics to people I've never met. No, I don't get all the inside jokes on her Flair corkboard. No, I didn't know she went to college in three different places. Seeing mom in the context of other adults, in the context of the great big world, and witnessing some interactions that have nothing to do with children, nothing to do with them, might just be good for our kids, especially the older ones. I have no solution to the privacy problem or our need for an "Adults Only" zone that's just as fun and immediate as Facebook, but until we figure it out, I am pretty sure that friending your kid is the only thing you can do.

What do you think?

Related post: Twitter, Tumblr, and Tags: You Are Still All Alone