Listen! One Year Later
Some of you may remember my letter from the front of teenage rock band rehearsals (Listen! Feb. 20, 2011). Last year, there was a little problem with the drummer’s sense of rhythm. So this year, my son and his bassist friend invited the most awesome drummer in the school to join them. This kid’s hero is Dream Theatre’s drummer Mike Portnoy, who can probably count as well as anyone living (if anyone has questions about the seriousness of contemporary rock musicianship, a few seconds of Mike counting to the score of Dance of Eternity should put them to rest!)
So they had a rehearsal at the drummer’s house, and it was fun, but he decided that he didn’t want to play incidental music for a Poetry Out Loud event. (It’s not exactly the kind of star billing star drummers like).
So today, the rehearsal is at our house. Instead of a drummer, there is a singer/songwriter - a childhood friend of my son’s, who traveled 50 miles for this rehearsal. She’s into it. She’s in tune. So this year, I’m staying out of the basement.
Teenagers tend to get a bad rap in today’s society. They are so often seen as truculent, uncommunicative, unruly forces who exist to be disciplined – or to resist discipline. Joseph Chilton Pearce talks eloquently about teenagers his books and lectures, and about how we need to nurture their idealism.
What I observe is that, as teenagers grow towards adulthood, they reflect back to us (mirror neurons again) the ways that we have shown them that adults behave. And these ways are not always flattering. Certain arguments coming out of my son’s mouth are ones that suspiciously follow my own inflections, phrasing, and logic (or lack of same!) It is difficult to see ourselves in this way - we remember our own pain.
One of the things I love to do is to pick up my son at high school. I’ll stand in the courtyard, with my dog on a leash (my excuse to be there, instead of hidden in my car like the other parents). When the bell rings, the kids start streaming out.
I watch them – the girls doing dance moves, the awkward boy-girl play, the ones that rush bent under their backpacks, the ones that strut and stroll, the little knots of excitement, the rotating nodes of interaction. I watch them the way I'd watch a school of fish, or flock of birds.
There are problems, I can see that. But I when i let go and just look at movement, all I see is life. It is beautiful.
“Hi, how’s it going?” I say to the vocalist. She’s come up the stairs to the kitchen, browsing for food.
“Good.”
“Do you have a playlist?”
“Well . . . “
“Here’s a pencil and paper. Write down everything you can play and put it in order. You can add or subtract. But a playlist is what will save you when you’re on stage.”
“OK, thanks.”
I guess I lied about staying out of it.
But I’m a really lucky parent. I don’t have to.
Comments
The trick with teens (who I dearly miss now that my
2 kids are early twenty-somethings) is to be
invisible. How I enjoyed EVERY New Year’s Eve,
from 6th Grade through the first few years of college,
having my small townhouse taken over by 6 or 7
boys! They ate, they played video games, they
ate, they had rubberband fights in the dark with about
30 “rules”, they ate, and they talked. They
talked to me, they talked to each other, and only once
- when in HS and the girl called them, - they talked on
the phone. Then they decided “NO PHONES”.
Hooray! There was no cursing, no alcohol, and
they didn’t take much notice of me except when I
replaced the plate that had held cookies with “Build
Yourself A Sundae” at 11 pm.
Oh, the things I heard. The things I
learned. The things I probably didn’t want to
know! But I consider myself lucky to have had
those years.
Thank you Carole, and Laura, for your perspectives from different ends of the parenting spectrum!
Laura Nerenberg Feb 13, 2012
I love teenagers, too! The way they see and interact with the world is just as fascinating to me as how toddlers see and interact with it. I love your descriptions of the teens spilling out of school: a flock of birds, indeed!