forty-six and I like it

Last night, I called E, the woman who will share her apartment with me during the Ladies Rock Camp. Like me, she's always wanted to go electric, move from coffee-house style to at least one louder. Like me, she sings, plays a little guitar. And, like me, she's over forty-five. We are different because she has no spouse or child. And she's a New Yorker.

E is going to camp because she's always wanted to rock out—plain and simple. She'd signed up with a girlfriend last summer, but foot surgery got in the way. For me, back surgery is a hindrance, and we both have decided to leave our own guitars at home.

E's friends—a drummer, a bassist, and a singer—have signed up with her, so I'll be odd girl out. No room to be bandmates.

It's no secret I'm nervous. It's a healthy nervous—the kind that comes from both travel and crippling stagefright.

Part of me thinks we're a bit closer to Iron Workz than we'd care to admit.



Another part of me watches eleven-year-old rockers and thinks I ought to give it up.



Then again, maybe I ought to embrace my outer forty-six year old. I can always blame arthritis, hot flashes, and memory lapses for the major suckage.



Eighteen year olds don't have an excuse.

mom who rocks

My daughter went to the Paul Green School of Rock, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. Until now.

One week from today, mommy goes away to rock camp. That's right. I'm enrolled in the Willie Mae Ladies Rock Camp in Brooklyn, New York. I'm not sure this conjures pleasing images. I know how my own goodbye-goodbyes* flap around when I'm strumming particularly hard. But I want to believe this isn't a pathetic attempt to recapture our youth.

When men have midlife crises, they buy a motorcycle or a new guitar or have an affair. How do women typically handle it? Like Shirley Valentine? But I don't want make fuck with Tom Conti. I want to do what I should have done the first time I heard Suzi Quatro and realized girls can do way better than date a guitarist. They can be one.

But—story of my life—I was impatient. And I never satisfied that guitar jones.

Now, at 47, I'm not content to be a Rocker Mom. I want to be a mom who rocks. My husband asked me the other day which guitar I would be taking. I looked surprised, as if there were any other guitar besides my Gibson Songwriter Deluxe.

"You can't take an acoustic guitar to rock camp!" he insisted.

Perhaps he's right. This isn't singer-songwriter camp, after all. But hey, plenty of people rock the acoustic, and I plan to do just that.

I'll send you a letter from camp.



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*Goodbye-goodbyes are that inch of extra skin under the arms that wave goodbye a second time by themselves. Some call them "flags" because they continue to wave.