Garden of Delight

Still, every night, I watch a show with Jack before he goes to bed.

He wears this green knitted beanie these days. Styles his long bangs out the front of it, across his forehead, just so. We recently had a family game night, and he participated, but also said “I’m just asking, but like, why do I have to be here?” His voice is getting deeper. He’s been obsessed with his voice getting deeper for about a year, and now I think it’s finally happening. He turned thirteen a couple days ago.

Still, by some miracle, when I pick him up from school he instantly tells me everything that happened. All the fights, all the drama. ‘L.R. was so mean to Ryan today, but Ryan was kind of like, asking for it, you know? And I stood up for Ryan? but maybe Ryan is kind of being a pain, also?’ I am simultaneously bored out of my skull, and totally hooked. Please be a good boy, I whisper under my breath, as he talks. Please be the hero of this story. Please spend your social capital to protect others. It’s not his job to be the hero, but nevertheless I hope. He usually makes a good choice. Occasionally, I disagree with his choice. But usually, regardless, I just listen, breathless with thanks that he still freely shares all of these secrets with me.

So tonight he put on Star Trek TNG, which we’ve been sort of half watching for a while, and then he searched on his new iPhone for songs on Spotify that he loves to play for me. I listened, and pulled up my faves on my iPhone to play for him. Interacting with Jack is the epitome of “yes, and“, and we can riff off each other for a good long while and it’s fun. He’s always game. It’s easy to “play” with him.

I thought of a song while we were doing this. When I was 21 and lived in Australia, and slept in the back of a gray 1982 Ford Falcon station wagon, my awful old boyfriend had this song on a mix tape that we would play in the evening (instead of watching tv, which we did not have, or reading books, which we also did not have). I have the most vivid visceral memory of playing it at a banana plantation in Coffs Harbor, Australia. We slept in the back of the Falcon in a parking spot in the plantation’s visitor’s center, on a blow up mattress, with hot water bottles (his lazy ass made me get up and refill them in the middle of the night when they got cold, and I did it, god bless me). He was the worst, and there were many flaws in that trip, but my god this song takes me back. Makes me feel my age, and also feel young again at the same time. I wanted to play it for him, but it took way too long to find it. The only lyric I remembered was “Garden of Delight,” and the name of this song is Macy Day Parade, but there are lots of other songs called garden of delight so it took me over an hour to find this.

I remember the crappy tape and/or crappy car stereo could not handle the bass OR treble of the song, and it would splattt and buzz and unsatisfyingly blur the lyrics. And I didn’t care – this terrible car, this awful stereo, this freezing night’s sleep without any real rest, this hostile boyfriend . . . it felt like real life, and I adored every second, and when Michael Penn sang his lyrics, I soared: Yes everything is changed / Everything you thought of / But don’t it look the same / When you bend down to it / Bend like giants filled with rum / You wanna see me Fee Fo Fum / You are traipsing through tonight / A garden of delight – – – So never mind / You never might / Till you cultivate an appetite / For the only open hand to bite / A garden of delight.

I can’t describe what this does to me. How I sit here, in this bed, 42 years old, mother of three, wife, lawyer, carrying all the burdens those titles entail, and yet at the same time I am 21, childless, burdened only by an abusive boyfriend that I will soon jettison. I am in New Orleans, Louisiana, covered by a 20 lb weighted blanket, and also 21 years old in Coff’s Harbor, Australia, eating a half dozen bananas for every meal because that is all I can afford. The whole world before me, my whole life before me. Guitars blazing, heartbeat rising. There is nothing I can’t do, nothing I can’t be. Now, at 42, I know that’s not true, but I can’t quite stop believing it.

Older kids are fun. People tell you to dread the teens, but I’ve just absolutely loved this age.