Parents: can't live with 'em...

A couple days ago, I had my friends Shawn and Chantal take a picture of me standing in front of my new Kia sportage. Here's the picture . (That's their inn, Auberge de Stowe, in the background.)


Through an amazing sequence of events, I inherited the truck when their niece abandoned it a couple months ago. It needs a new heater core, but other than that, is driveable. Seeing as my last car died on the interstate when I moved up to Vermont (see this post for that story), I've been without a vehicle for the last eight months... so to get a free truck (with awesome snow tires) was, like I said, amazing.

I basically got a great five-speed four-wheel-drive for the cost of tax, title, tags and repairs. About a thousand bucks.

Life is good.

Anyway, since the vehicle is now street legal, I wanted my parents to SEE the truck... also, since I haven't been home to see them since Thanksgiving, let them see ME with the truck... so I emailed the picture of me standing in front of it, all proud. Max and his new used SUFree... the first picture of me, really, that my parents have seen in five months.

So today I got an email back from my dad. He showed the picture to Mom... whose response, relayed via email from my dad, was, and I quote:

"Oh, look at that hair... he'll NEVER get a job looking like that."

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I took a breath and typed back "This is Vermont. Expectations are different here. Besides, I'm through with those kinds of jobs."

I felt much the same way that Woody Allen must've felt in that documentary WILD MAN BLUES... it was a film about his jazz band (Woody's a jazz clarinetist and plays a regular gig at some club in NYC; this movie was a documentary about his band playing a festival in France)... anyway there's a scene where they show Woody and his parents (both now in their 90s) in his apartment in Manhattan... now putting aside the whole Soon Yi thing, and the fact that he hasn't done a GREAT movie in a while, still, this is WOODY FREAKIN' ALLEN, one of the best director-screenwriters of the last fifty years... an Oscar winner... by any standard a success. Anyway, they're talking about Woody's filmmaking and music and all, and his mother says...

"We still think you would have been a great doctor, Woody."

He stammers some reply and she continues. "We do, we do. We wanted you to go to medical school like (relative's name)."

So, as Shawn puts it, it never ends.

And as Carolyn Hax put it, when dealing with parents, apply the law of diminished expectations. Expect nothing other than what you've always gotten, and then anything you get on top of that will be a happy bonus. You just have to bless them and let them go on their way, thinking what they think.

I love my parents... they've given me so much, but they will never get used to the idea that I moved up here to break through as a novelist and do so while living minimally in an area I love. And a few years ago, their response --no, never mind their ACTUAL response, but "what I imagined their response might have been"-- would have paralyzed me.

Today, though, I just took a breath and typed back. I am liberated.

Still, a part of me hopes that someday, when I've sold my books and broken through as a writer, they'll make a WILD MAN BLUES about me... and Mom can sit there on camera at the kitchen table, swirling the coffee around in her mug.

"You would have been such a great teacher... and your hair looks so handsome when you keep it trimmed."

The internet way of thinking

On the XM classic soul station ("soul street") recently, I heard a great old David Ruffin solo track from the 70s: "Walk Away From Love." I remember the song from the radio back then: it's one of those classic mid-70s sweet soul records, replete with strings and horns and glockenspiel, courtesy of a beautiful arrangement by Van McCoy. I downloaded the track from iTunes and of course wanted to hear MORE... I told myself that I'd get the download for now, and then just get the track on CD along with "more" Ruffin-by-Van, and I'd be set.

Well, "more" is kind of problematic. The original 1975 LP on which "Walk Away From Love" appeared (Here I Am) is out-of-print on compact disc... "out-of-print" with a caveat. You can get Here I Am if you want to buy a limited edition (5000 numbered copies, on Hip-O Select) boxed set of The Great David Ruffin: The Complete Motown Solo Albums Volume Two. This two-disc set has all four mid-70s solo albums that McCoy arranged and produced for Ruffin... plus outtakes.

Tempting... and I want to hear more...

...but I don't know that I NEED to hear that much more... I don't know that I WANT that much more. I also don't know when I'll have the time to really sit and LISTEN to that much more. Forty more tracks of David Ruffin produced by Van McCoy is about 30 more than I was looking for at the moment, really.

But there's a kind of thinking that the internet seems to encourage (if not spawn)... a thinking that says

YOU WANT
DAVID RUFFIN
ARRANGED AND
PRODUCED BY
VAN MCCOY?
HERE'S THE
COMPLETE
SESSIONS!
EVERY NOTE
THEY EVER
RECORDED!

THIRTY-FIVE BUCKS.

More David Ruffin and Van McCoy than I would listen to for the rest of the year, if I even stayed interested that long. I mean, I love "Walk Away From Love"... it's a gorgeous track. But I'm not writing a master's thesis on David Ruffin and Van McCoy. I just wanted to hear a few more tracks, that's all. I don't want or need all four albums plus outtakes all at once. I just wanted to hear a little bit more, a little bit at a time.

But the internet way of thinking is GET IT ALL. RIGHT NOW.

The thing is: I will probably end up ordering that boxed set eventually. But I know I'd enjoy it more if I could just get the stuff one album at a time, though. It's not the internet way, but it's my way.