Radio Shame

At first, I was ashamed to admit it. I hid it on the 6th preset station, separated from NPR by at least three unprogrammed buttons, in a spot to which Hubby's finger seemed unlikely to wander. When I parked the car in front of our house, I carefully returned the radio to the NPR station, just in case someone other than me and The Boy might be in the car the next time I turned the key in the ignition. This being winter, I was saved the discomfort of keeping the windows firmly up and all sounds inside, shielded from the prying ears of neighboring cars.

And yet. I am no longer ashamed to admit it. I listen to a Top 40 radio station.

I could defend myself by pointing out that I was practically bullied into it. The Asheville radio choices are dismal -- at least to a sophisticated former city dweller such as myself, spoiled by the endless airwaves choices of Southern California. Morning Becomes Eclectic, bluegrass, alt-country, even good flamenco is available there if you know how to spot it.

Oh, come on. Who's kidding whom? If I'm fully disclosing, I might as well admit that in Los Angeles I alternated between presetting the radio to the second NPR station I knew I should be listening to and a cheesy player of 70's and 80's fare that I justified preferring when I was pregnant for reasons no longer readily apparent to me.

Still, the choices are far more limited in our new home. During those first long months before daycare shined a smiling face on us, I hoped for the comforts of NPR shows to entertain me as I entertained The Boy. To my chagrin, instead of gorging myself on episodes of The World, Day to Day, and The Business, I found myself feeding The Boy lunch to the strains of not particularly imaginative classical music. This lulling, tear-inducing fare began at 9 a.m., pretty much as soon as Hubby abandoned me for the "excitement" of the newsroom, and continued until 3:00, when I was generally wandering the streets with the stroller in search of stimulation and thus, sadly, oh so sadly, missing Fresh Air. Once The Boy was ready for dinner, All Things Considered had already ended and I had to listen to local talk shows about gardening or, um, nothing.

I did try to make up for this void by diligently downloading podcasts of my favorite shows. But -- and this might be a big, fat, sad clue to my affinity for Top 40 fare -- I didn't purchase an iPod until a few months ago. At this point, The Boy was in school and I was (supposedly) busy at work on my computer and no longer in desperate need of public radio. In my novice iPod fever, I downloaded exactly half of my CD selection to my computer (the other half seems to have mysteriously disappeared during the move, something about which I'm just sure Hubby knows not a thing). But playing the tinny sounding familiar songs while I worked proved too distracting.

As for my podcasts, they can be great company in the car. The only problem is, it never takes more than 10 minutes to get anywhere by car in Asheville. That's a lot of grocery trips to get in one full episode of Filmspotting. (And perhaps too many of The Loh Down on Science, which, I've found, is best sampled through the occasional, "Oh, it's The Loh Down on Science!" rather than in frenzied blocks designed to clear off the iPod for the next sync session.)

For a time, when driving I felt obligated to take advantage of our lingering XM subscription, a byproduct of Hubby's hound-accompanied cross-country drive. While I got an initial jolt of nostalgia from Fred's alt-tinged 80's fare, it quickly began to seem less like an enjoyable way to get from our house to the pediatrician's office and more like something I was trying to use up, like a series of yoga classes with a fast-approaching expiration date.

And so, the other day, I reached for the scan button, willing, just for the hell of it, to warble along to some bad country music or to join Dido in an rousing rendition of "Thank You" while recalling the old days in St. Louis, where such songs made me feel sadly defiant about living alone with my basset hound.

I can't say what song it was that made me stop. But as soon as I heard the ubiquitous "Star" moniker, I pressed firmly and decisively on the preset button. I knew I would return, so why resist?

Thereafter came the shame. Had I truly become one of those old people so uncool she doesn't even care how uncool she is? No longer can I pretend to be the young gal wearing an unwrinkled, coordinated outfit, prettified in make-up that is less than three years old, and sporting hair that she has actually bothered to style. That woman cruised along in her frequently clean Audi A4 unafraid to open the windows to the alternative station that maybe set her apart as being too old to appreciate -- or even listen to -- rap, but signaled that she was something more exotic than her faded, motherly, thirtysomething counterparts.

Now you can spot me on Merrimon Avenue in my Honda CRV (not a Highlander because when were child-car hunting and Hubby mentioned the Highlander, I cried real tears), my hair in a messy brown ponytail, some mascara my only admission that the "natural" look is something no one really looks good in, even though we pretend we think so. A child seat is the main decoration visible from the outside, but if you were to enter my auto realm you would be treated to a floor strewn with organic imitation Cheerios, a blue polka-dotted grocery cart seat cover, and a few very old bottles of sun block that used to occupy The Boy while strapped in for a ride.

So, really, how much could a little Top 40 hurt my image?

It was Tuesday when I embraced my Top 40 proclivities, and not in capitulation to life as a deeply unhip over-the-hill mother. No, on that lovely, 70-degrees-and-sunny day that felt like spring and Long Beach, I decided my dirty little secret isn't so dirty after all.

I started the day feeling pretty down. The day before I felt I had begun to hit my stride after our orgy of out-patient surgery and viral pneumonia and snow days. I was just finishing up a legal project, clearing the way to a week of time to write, write write. In my mind I would post a fabulous story on my blog, muscle my way into a weekly column at the Citizen Times, finish my book proposal, rouse at least fifty more reviewers for my Amazon.com contest excerpt, and maybe even have time to delve back into my yoga teacher sleuth novel.

My high hopes blew up with a resigned little gasp when The Boy's school called at 3:00. "He's got a fever of 100.5, and he had a loose bowel movement," they informed me solemnly. "You need to come pick him up."

Ha, I thought to myself as I sweetly promised to be right there. This was nothing more than the result of indulgently letting The Boy eat as much venison sausage as he wanted at the Super Bowl party the night before. He would be fine while I at least finished my paying work.

One impatient phone call informing me that his temperature had climbed to 101.1 later, I finally showed up to collect him. Rather belligerently, I noted that, "This means he can't come tomorrow either, doesn't it?"

"Twenty-four hours fever free without medication," one of the caregivers told me in that annoying way some people have of telling you the rule you already knew without offering you some hope that there is a way to interpret it that might allow you to bring your child to daycare the next day.

And so I found myself Tuesday morning with another day devoted to my child.

This is not, I hasten to explain, a bad thing in theory. I love my child, and I love spending time with him, even if I do like to do it in a room with a clock and, for a mere 45 minutes a day (which can't have long term negative effects, right?), a television set. But I've been working for months to figure out what I want to do with my life outside of mothering, and I am, frankly, more than ready to get on with it. A snow day here, an illness there -- I can convince myself that these are opportunities to slow down and enjoy The Boy before he grows up. But at some point it's only fair that I get my chance.

Apparently, Tuesday was not the day when that chance would come. Instead, I made the best of it and resolved to do the things that needed doing but couldn't get done while I was at my desk writing.

Next thing The Boy knew, he was in the car on his way to Amazing Savings. And, yes, the Top 40 radio station was playing.

Freed from the house, basking in the sunshine like a basset hound flopped belly-up on the back porch, enjoying my new coral-and-brown New Balance shoes that the teacher at Jack's school with a degree from the Fashion Institute proclaimed "great," I started feeling almost as great as my shoes. And the song about the woman whose kids make fun of her because she's still stuck in the 80's didn't make a dent in my mood.

We parked at the Amazing Savings closer to town -- the one I hadn't been to because everyone told me it was smaller and dirtier than the one a 20-minute drive away. But it was a day for adventure. If I could brave the derision of those who knew I dared listen to a Top 40 station, then I could brave the derided local Amazing Savings.

Making our way past the loading dock and through the doors of the windowless warehouse, The Boy and I stepped into something that felt familiar, in a hip, Californian way. The crowded aisles, the nonsuburban shoppers -- there was something faintly Trader Joe's-esque about this place. The rival Amazing Savings's fluorescent lighting, scarred floors, and dirty-ish shelves had scared me off their produce; the ghost of the supermarket the space had once been haunted the zucchini, making them seem older than they were, and introduced the suggestion of mold on the garlic. In this market-like space, however, the organic red peppers glowed, and, at $3.99 a pound, made me weep with joy. (If you are reading this from California, please stop laughing and have some pity for me, living in a place where organic red peppers regularly sell for -- I kid you not -- $7.99 a pound and thus have been absent from my diet since we moved here.)

But here's the thing that made me happiest. As The Boy and I cruised the aisles looking for all natural deals, I found myself humming along to Michelle Branch. And Peter Gabriel. And old Foo Fighters. Music I had just been listening to in my car.

It really doesn't matter to me that I had a baby in my shopping cart or that most of the people in the store were at least as old as I am or even that I was grocery shopping for goodness sakes, not checking out some funky So Ho boutique. I felt young and lighthearted and cool enough to be buying discount organic food in a warehouse on the outskirts of a kind of funky, kind of artsy, progressive, and, yes, hip city. Even though slightly outdated Top 40 was playing over the loudspeakers and would soon be playing in my car as we drove home. Or maybe because of it.

Besides, how can I resist a radio station where I get to hear songs with lyrics likening your love to a tattoo because, "I will always have it with me"? With such treats awaiting me, I'm happy to admit that I'd rather have a good laugh and a tune I can sing with than something the critics tell me it's okay to like.