Justin and Me

Like many parents, Alec and I fell into the “kid music” trap when C.C. was very little.  And, once you are in, it’s like quicksand.  Really hard to get out, especially once you start taking the little bugger to Music Together classes, where they give out CDs featuring classics like “Little Liza Jane.”  It was years before I stopped humming, “Hello, everybody.  So glad to see you” when I walked into my own classes.

But we made our way through those years with heavy doses of Dan Zanes, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly.  And then, slowly and cleverly, Alec began to integrate the grownup music—Springsteen and Dylan, Neil Young, Guns ‘N Roses, and the Gourds.  He did it with patience and perseverance, working through the initial protestations until the kids were belting out the Cure’s Friday I’m in Love from the backseat every Friday after school.

But now, for the first time, one of our children has come home with his own request for music—something he has never heard in our house or car.  Milo got a ride to soccer last week with his friend Jonas’s mom.  Jonas has a sister, Sarah, who is nine and is VERY into…Justin Bieber.  When Milo came home, he told Alec he had something to tell him, in private.  He pulled Alec’s ear down to the level of his mouth and whispered:  “Daddy, Justin Bieber is okay.  He’s pretty good.”  Perhaps he had heard us mocking JB a couple of months ago when Bieber came to Barcelona.  In truth, I had never heard a Justin Bieber song, so it wasn’t really fair to judge him.  Or if I had heard one, I couldn’t put the song together with the singer.

Alec clued me in and, the next day on my way to school with the kids, I baited Milo. 

“So, Milo.  What are you listening to these days?  I just downloaded this new CD and I can’t stop playing it. Does that ever happen to you.”

“Well, there is someone I like, but I want to tell you about it in private.”

This is interesting, no?  Somehow he intuited that it might not be cool to be a Bieber fan.  But I didn’t want him to feel embarrassed about what he liked so.  After school, when C.C. went to the park with Elke and I asked Milo if he wanted to read The Cat in the Hat, he said, no, he wanted to listed to Justin Bieber songs on the computer.  So we did.  Lots of them.  And then I asked him if he wanted me to buy one of the albums for him. 

I enabled the problem I currently have.  Because ever since then, Milo has been walking around the apartment every waking moment, my iPad tucked under his arm blasting My World 2.0 like some kind of modern day, miniature Radio Raheem, albeit less political.

Although the content of Milo’s obsession does not derive from Alec’s and my musical tastes, Milo inherited the practice of playing one song, or one album, over and over and over and over directly from Alec.  Alec is somewhat more conscious about subjecting the rest of us to whatever he is playing in an endless loop on any given day—he does it in the car, or in his office wearing earphones.

When Milo came into the kitchen for breakfast on Monday clutching my iPad, the strains of “Baby, Baby, Baby Oh” signaling his imminent arrival long before he stepped over the threshold, C.C. ran to my bedside table for some earplugs.  I want to support the development of my son’s musical taste, but I’m not ready to plug him into headphones, because that, too, is a slippery slope.  I don’t want him to know just how easy it is to tune me out from now until he’s of age.  And yet I am also unprepared for JB to become our constant background music.  The kids know that I am sensitive to noise, any noise, even noise that I like.  So perhaps we will just have to establish some limits—hours in which JB is allowed in the public spaces of the apartment and hours in which he must stay in the kids’ room.

I should admit that I’m not really one to talk.  I listened to my Barry Manilow Live! double album constantly, and way past the age when it could be remotely considered cool.  Alec, on the other hand, asked his parents for a Johnny Cash album at the age of 5, and followed that up with a request for the Beatles White Album.  But we can’t all be that cool.

I asked Milo if maybe he might like his own iPod—he could use it this summer on our long car trips, and we could load it up with his favorite books and music.  “That would be great, Mom,” he said.  “Peter has a nano, and so does Talia.  There’s three things I would want to put on my very own iPod.  Justin Bieber, the Ramones, and Lucinda Williams.”  There’s still hope.

The Penis on the Beach

After a slow start yesterday, Alec went to the market to shop while I went out to replace C.C.’s scooter, which had been stolen months ago at the Barceloneta.  Elke stayed with the kids, who were happily wrapped up in their imaginary dragon game.  The scooter theft was a big deal for C.C.  She had left it parked a few meters away from where Alec and some friends were sitting to eat, and when she went back for it it was simply gone.  It was nearly impossible for her to wrap her mind around the idea that someone would just take it when it did not belong to him or her.  It makes me sad to have to explain such things to my children.

The forecast predicted that Saturday would be the nicer of the two weekend days, so we decided to go to the beach, where the scooter would come in handy—the promenade along the beachfront is great for biking and scootering, and it’s just much easier to get the scooters there than it is to get the bikes.  The forecast, by the way, is rarely correct, but it’s all we have, so we (sort of) rely on it anyway.  On our walking/scootering way to find a nice, not-too-crowded spot, we saw a person wearing an inflatable penis suit walking the beach (see photo below).  Odd, and certainly something I had never witnesses, but no one else seemed to bat an eye.  I found it to be rather remarkable actually, which is why I’m documenting it here.

The kids jumped in the water while the grownups lazed about and ate delicious, perfectly sweet cold watermelon that Alec had purchased and Elke had cut into chunks.  We swung by the FC Barca store at Camp Nou on the way home so that Elke could pick up some jerseys for her kids.  The place was MOBBED, probably because Barca had just sewn up the League championships on Wednesday (this is different from the Champions League final that will be played against Manchester United on May 28, in case you are trying to keep all of this straight).  There is nothing like a big victory to initiate a run on the sale of team regalia.

We had plans to go out with our friends Vibeke and Eirik that evening for dinner, but Elke had not slept well the night before and, given that our reservation was not until 9:30 pm, decided to stay home with the kids and turn in early.  Alec and I met Vibeke and Eirik at Restaurant Me, near the intersection of Carrer de Paris and Muntaner.  Me bills its cuisine as a blend of Vietnamese, New Orleans and Catalan cooking.  Sounds like a stretch, but it really works.  I had a green papaya salad with beef jerky, and then scallops dusted with Cajun spices and a radicchio arugula something or other on the side.  A great local white wine.  Delicious, well-executed, and satisfied my constant craving for spicy food here in Barcelona.

It was 1:30 by the time we got home, and I slept until the glorious hour of 10:30.  When I shuffled into the kitchen I found Alec sitting on a chair facing and reorganizing the refrigerator.  Have I mentioned our refrigerator?  It is very small.  As much as I admire the ability of Europeans to live with much less stuff than Americans do, to drive smaller cars and live in smaller spaces, as much as I have embraced the practice of hanging out my laundry to dry, I have not been able to love my small refrigerator.  I love the idea of buying and chilling the food I will eat for the next couple of days, but it’s not my reality.  I love keeping a big pot of soup in the refrigerator to eat all week for lunch.  I feel better when I have leftovers.  I have a thing for condiments—jams, spreads, mustards.  Alec cooks big batches of beans and rice for the kids that constitute their side dishes for days on end.  So what ends up happening is that we do a lot of shoving of various items into the fridge and quickly shutting the door before anything falls out.  Periodically Alec gets fed up and does something about it.  This morning he was doing it, and I am proud to say that at this very moment I would show anyone the inside of my refrigerator.

Alec and the kids met up with Vibeke, Eirik, and their kids to go to the Miro museum and then swimming at the pool.  Elke and I went downtown to visit La Pedrera, the apartment building Antoni Gaudi designed on the Passeig de Gracia.  I had never been.  It’s pretty spectacular, especially the roof terrace, which undulates and is punctuated by Seussian towers and nooks.

Elke leaves tomorrow morning, after having spent the past four days with me in one long conversation.  We have known each other for 20 years, since our first day of orientation at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, where we both studied planning.  We only lived in the same city for the first three of those 20 years, but when we see each other, or talk on the phone, we click right back in.  Somehow we have managed to maintain the connection, and I’m very grateful for it.

Photos of the Day

Living for Tomorrow

Today, Milo found a watch he had received as a gift months ago.  He brought it to Alec and asked:

“Daddy, will you set my watch fast so that I can live a little bit into the future?”