Some Musings on Children and Summer

Last week I went to the Central Park Zoo with my oldest friend.  She had her 14-year-old grandson with her for the summer, so he came too.  Based on things she had told me, I thought he was interested in wildlife, particularly birds, but he said no, he wasn't interested in birds, he preferred dogs, so I asked him about his dog.  That was probably the last verbal interchange we had.  After that his ears were so totally plugged up with whatever he was listening to (my friend said it was Rap, but I wouldn't have cared if it had been Bach) that he did not respond to any attempts to make conversation.  I complained about it to my friend and she said "well, he's 14".  I don't consider that a valid excuse.  He needs to be taught that that sort of behavior just, as the British say "won't do".  At what age are young people supposed to be taught manners, then?  Fine if he looks sullen, fine if he looks bored.  People can't be expected to control the fact that emotions show on their faces.  That's acceptable for 14.  But when you are someplace, that's where you are. You don't block out where you are with plugs in your ears.  Of course adults do this too, and  (because I'm an "ear person"?) I find this much worse than sitting and texting.  At least if you're doing that and someone speaks to you you know you've been spoken to. 

Fourteen was pretty much my last chance to take the right "fork in the road" and I didn't.  I'm not sure what would have made a difference; there was such a terrible confluence of circumstances.  An eating disorder, my mother's preoccupation with grieving over my father's death, my lack of adult mentors (most of the adults I saw in my mother's house were drinking and being smartass).  And of course the fact that it was the 60s, when it was cool to say yes to drugs and no to just about everything else: school, career plans, thinking about a future, learning homemaking and budgeting skills... But even I would have responded if someone spoke to me in the course of an afternoon when my mother dragged me off to an "enrichment activity" with her friends.  I might have said something stupid or something fresh, but I would have said something.

So I think of all the "theater kids" (did that phrase even exist before the millennium? I doubt it).  And the kids who are in enrichment programs and intensive courses which means summers away in beautiful surroundings.  Middle class kids have these things paid for by parents.  Some less privileged kids can get scholarships if they're lucky. Sometimes I think there are two types of kids (irrespective of race or class).  The ones who appreciate the chance to build a future and the ones who snub adults and try to be cool.  As I said in an earlier post about marijuana, the world is too competitive and harsh to shoot yourself in the foot by saying no to your future to spite grownups.  The fallout from that will still be with you when you're 60.  I know.

Ah, summer!  Since I haven't been working and have been a caregiver I haven't really had a summer.  Another marker of being a middle-class professional: summers away.  All those summer music festivals.  Professional and emerging professional musicians get to go to these.  Sometimes I shut my eyes and think how desperately I yearn to be someplace like that. There are ones for writers and artists too.  I forget the generic catch-all phrase for these.  Colonies? 

I know that one of the things that antagonized the loathesome LC (in addition to my talking about myself instead of sobbing over the shooting in Orlando the week following) was that I referred to myself as "underprivileged".  Well I think I am.  I'm not really poor; I don't worry about how I'm going to pay the rent or buy food, and I have a few small luxuries, but I don't go away for the summer.  That's what "underprivileged" means to me.  That's why there's a "fresh air fund" for kids.

Maybe there's a music and arts "camp" for senior citizens.  If I ever have some free time I will look for one and scrounge up the money.

Weighty Matters

What woman, fat, thin, or in between, isn't obsessed with her weight? I know this is a blog about singing, but I'm mentioning this because I believe that my (largely misplaced) obsession with thinness was one of many things that undermined my singing, most notably starting to smoke (and becoming very quickly addicted) at the age of 13 because I was told it was an appetite suppressant.

Here is a photo of me when I was about 5. An old childhood friend, in a belated condolence letter, sent photos of a vacation our parents took together back in, I guess, 1955. (I cropped him out of this photo to protect privacy.)

At this age I already thought of myself as hugely fat, which I was not. I huffed and puffed a lot during any sort of physical exertion (there's another photo, which I can't bear to look at, of me at the same age, swinging from a bar, which most children thought was fun, with my face contorted in pain, and my feet only three inches off the ground), but that was because I needed my adenoids out, and also because I have scoliosis so running and similar forms of exercise are uncomfortable.

In any event, based on the demographics of my childhood, I definitely was fatter than other little girls my age, whose mothers only knew how to stick a tv dinner in the oven, and who were deprived of dessert as a punishment for misbehavior (not because anyone back then worried about the effects of sugar on the brain). But I certainly wasn't medically obese.

By the time I was 13, I was definitely no longer overweight in any medical sense. I was 5 foot 6 (ah, if I could still be that tall!) and my weight fluctuated between 140 and 155. But I was never a gangly ectomorph, which many girls that age are. I was built like Kim Novak, who, no longer an ideal, was now referred to as "husky" and everyone wanted to look like Twiggy or Mia Farrow.

At 13 (I have no pictures of myself at that age because I felt so fat and ugly I wouldn't let anyone take one) I was a very attractive young woman and if I had left myself alone, I might have really done something with the voice that everyone was starting to notice.

At that age I sounded like Julie Andrews and could actually sing staccato up to an E flat (I asked my teacher if I lost that range because of smoking - even though I haven't had a cigarette since 1982 - and he said no, often children with high voices lose that range, even girls.)

At the same time that my friend emailed me this photo, he also emailed one of my parents, sitting with some other adults outside our summer colony in the Adirondacks. My mother (although she wore a size 18 back then, and was 5 foot 2, 165 pounds) doesn't look hugely fat either although I remember being ashamed of her when I compared her to the other adult women and I notice in the photo she is wearing a long cotton skirt and the other women are wearing shorts.

Well, that's all water under the bridge.

When I started singing again at 54 I said that no matter what I was not going to starve myself to maintain a weight that is uncomfortably low. When I do that, yes, I look better, but I feel awful, get tired easily, have problems with blood sugar swings, and don't sing well.

This time I am giving myself the absolutely best shot at doing everything I can to sing well. Other than having to earn a living and care for my aging loved one, this is my number one priority. Needless to say, if I'm serious about my body-as-instrument, I'm not going to be stuffing myself with sugary junk food. But if the waistband on my size 10 skirt is too tight, so be it. I sing so much better now than when my waist was so small I looked like I would break in half.