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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 3, 2014)
Street roots Jan. 3, 2014* With the new year comes a chance to reflect and change Melissa Favara Melissa Favara teaches English in Vancouver a nd lives and writes in North Portland, where she parents Ramona, age 7, hosts a bi-monthly reading series, a n d counts her husband a nd her city as the two great loves o f her life. Leonard Cohen sang, “It’s four in the morning/the end of December/I’m writing you now/Just to see if you’re better...” in the mournful 70s tune “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Actually, here in the last embers of 2013, it’s more like late afternoon, and we—Ramona, her father Marshall and I—are ready to do better in 2014. The really stupid parental fight started around, of all things, Ramona’s ukulele lesson on Sunday. Ukulele is the latest Ro endeavor. She’s been singing soulfully for the last year (her second grade teacher taught the whole class the song abbut the doomed “Molly Malone,” of all things, and she goes all Billie Holliday over the line about “cockles and mussels, alive, alive o”) and strumming tunelessly on a ratty guitar left behind by an old roommate. Fate struck when we happened to be at a swimming party this summer on the Washougal and were thrown together with Larry Yes, old friend to both me and Marshall, separately—back in 1997, when I was 23, I’d sit rapt on the floor of the Satyricon as Larry twanged out his solo set—part Prince, part Django Reinhardt, part, William Blake—and absolutely original. In 2006, it was a Larry Yes song that was playing on the iPod in the delivery room when Ramona came topside at Legacy Emanuel. Imagine our very Portland-specific joy when the circle came round and Ramona and Larry hit it off, splashing in the swimming hole. Would Larry teach her guitar? He would! But they’d start with ukulele—better for small hands. Now Sunday morning is Creative Jazz dance class with Ching Ching at the Northwest Dance Project and Sunday afternoon is the uke in Larry’s cheery North Portland house. " They flll 'gfbWth begihs with unpleasant honesty, so here goes. I’m so ashamed of this feeling that I’m going to put it in parentheses. (Even as I’m ridiculously self-critical of the job that I’m doing raising Ramona, l am really, really jealous of Ramona’s childhood, and sometimes, that makes me feel like I’m about seven myself. Moody. Needy. Easily frustrated, etc. Thanks for letting me get that out) Sunday, we’d just pulled the 5-hour drive back from my in-laws’ in Ashland and the double-shot emotional exhaustion of a whole week of festivity/friend/family celebration— Christmas week always ends with a bit of overload, and while Marshall and I love one Convenient as it sounds, here’s what another deeply, we sometimes travel really happened next: Monday morning together poorly. The mix of my passenger Ramona and Marshall had an argument — seat anxiety and Marshall’s laissez faire she was embarrassed when he questioned attitude toward the dotted white line and turn signals leaves us a little snippy and raw her choice of apparel in front of the friend wtio’d come over to play. She yelled at her if we’re not careful, and we had not been dad to get out of her room, he took careful. My forgetting to get cash for Larry exception to the yelling, etc., until I before Marshallhad to leave to drop her off suggested that Marsh go to work and leave combined perfect storm-style with Marshall me and Ramona to work it out. “I don’t nursing a lingering chest cold, me feeling moody after my mom flew back to Michigan, know how to not yell! I was so embarrassed! When I’m embarrassed I get so mad!” she half unpacked bags spilling laundry and explained. It took us the better part of an light-up holiday headgear into, the living - room to form a “we’re too disorganized/hold hour to tease apart how hard, and yet how important it is to take a minute to up your end, then/I always get the cash for understand exactly why you’re upset, then lessons/don’t take that tone with me/well explain your feelings to the other person in don’t take that tone with me/why can’t you a way that doesn’t give them something to r be nice to me, I’m exhausted/why caa’tyou be upset about, too. “But Mommy, when be nice to me, I’m exhausted” non-celebrity death match that spilled into Monday morning with choppy "Like many people who haw un-fantastic childhoods, conditions and a sometimes I feel like I'm d ra ff In f a deflated parachute seasonable chill behind me, and I'm looking lor somethlnf sharp enonfh around Chez Us. In the midst of snip the cords with. J' this, Ramona, home from her lesson, pUnked out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” you’re angry, don’t you want to make the on her pink Mahalo ukulele (“Mommy! other person angry?” I sighed (we. were in. Check it out!”), which made for an odd the car, and I clocked her earnest soundtrack to the tension. Another strange expression in the rearview mirror). “Yeah, combination, when I started to think about honey, but it’s really our job, each of us, to it, was that one of the central reasons I was try to not do that. If we do that, everybody (I cop to it) so easily offended that day was stays angry. Nobody feels better.” Ramona then borrowed my phone to because I’d just watched Ramona as Marshall, whom I count the best of dads, leave a inessage for Marshall: “Daddy, I kind hike and sing and giggle and ice skate of feel stupid about what I said this through another holiday week of bonding, morning, because that was kind of a stupid and realized that even though I reflect with subject. Can we just get over it? Can you regret on my loving mother’s inability, single give me a call when you get (his message, „ as she was when J- tfeasewsffl/ro offer me because I really want to know if you feel like tous{c lemons, whaTl really envy abdutmy that, too.” He called back an hour later, arid kid is having adad who’s present and good we all agreed to chuck the mood of the last few days and be in love again. at it. And I think I have to name that and acknowledge it as a thing before it will go Something, iis coming into focus. I think this year, I have to slow down my reactions anywhere. Like many people who had un-fantastic childhoods, sometimes I feel with my people, really reckon with what like I’m still dragging a deflated parachute baggage I might be bringing into the moment like I asked Ramona to do. I also behind me, and I’m looking for something sharp enough to snip the cords with. I can think I have to buy a ukulele for myself — I see where the struggle against that weight always wanted to be in a band when I was a child, but I never learned how to play takes me out of the present, makes me impatient, thin-skinned, reluctant to let go of anything. Ramona says that when I get one, a slight. I’d like to be more like Ramona, she’ll show me what she learned when she , whose method of blowing up, calming down, gets home from her lessons. She says we and then picking up a new thread seems to can practice together. be working for her. to Portland embrace leiuatu diversity www.portlandhearingvoices.net Thank you Street Roots readers for all your support. Happy New Year!
