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.