Suburbia

Ila's going to a very cute little preschool, cozy and small, tucked beneath a church on a back country road. She has a tiny class of eight with two sweet teachers, adorable classmates, and she learns a new song or game every day. She comes home and says things like, "Science is fun Mom." Totally worth the gazillion dollars! Most of the moms are very thin, have an extra baby on the hip and absolutely no split ends or dark roots. Their cars are big and shiny, and they're usually coordinating some fabulous project for the teachers or a food drive or something. Needless to say I feel like the misfit I was in high school - though I look more like them now, just heavier and ungroomed.

Fortunately, thanks to my dear brother-in-law Michael, I get to channel those misfit feelings into rebel status, just like I used to. I've rediscovered a couple of mixes he made me some years back, and one is jam-packed with the delicious sounds of the eighties. God I feel young driving away from school in my small, dirty station wagon blasting the Dead Kennedys or Joy Division. Takes me right back to that time when I was so proud of saying - I'm not one of you! Revisionist memories of course, because somehow, the mists of nostalgia keep me from truly recalling the misery I felt because I didn't have the boyfriend I wanted, my mom wouldn't let me go see Frankie Goes to Hollywood at midnight in New York (what was she thinking?) or my leggings from Unique Boutique had a hole in them. Funny how in Oakland I sometimes found myself ashamed of how much we had - our actually quite fancy Jetta, my iPod, a nice garden. And now I'm parading around with a righteous firmly-in-the-middle-class attitude. Wonder when I'm going to grow up and stop caring what other people think, or at least stop being such a hypocrite. Probably never, but if I get down about it, I now know that it's nothing a little new wave can't cure.