Mary McAdams

Humanity

This year I’ve been trying to gain a little understanding into our shared humanity.  My own humanity and that of those I share this world with.  By that, I mean everyone.

There is this deep sense of understanding within me and I don’t know where it comes from.  Perhaps my elders honed it within themselves and passed it on to me.  People will never fail to fail.  Mistakes are for making.  Perhaps it’s like the old expression goes, “It’s not the absurdity, it’s your reaction to it.”  It’s not, “how could God let it happen?”  Instead perhaps, God is in our reaction to what happened.

I forgive.  I need to be forgiven.  Don’t get me wrong, I hold grudges; but I don’t hold them well, I don’t hold them long and I can only hold one at a time.  It’s a curse and it’s a blessing.  My memory is short.  And that is a curse and it’s a blessing.

At one point, I started a list, so I wouldn’t forget.  Then a  friend would see me talking to someone who had dissed me, and say, “Why were you talking to her? After what she did to you?”  I had forgotten former said dissing.  But keeping the list was killing me.  Forgetting was far easier.  People change.  They do better when they know better.

I feel like I’ve seen it all this year.  Or maybe I’m just seeing with new eyes.

People will fail you.  People will disappoint you.  It’s not necessarily a character flaw.  We’re all reaching.  None of us are there yet.  I’m beginning to think it’s just our humanity.  We are flawed.  I don’t have it figured out yet, but I do know that it’s not cause for alarm.  I’m beginning to think it’s an opportunity for understanding.

We hold people to high standards.  And then they show their humanity.  We are surprised.  Maybe their failings are less about them, and more about us.  Maybe what’s important is our reaction and our understanding.

Hello!

I’m just back from spending a day at the Sonic Factory Recording Studio, what could be called my favorite place on the planet!  Well, favorite place in Des Moines maybe (Maui being my favorite planet place).

I am late, as usual, recording a Christmas song for y’all.  Why get going on things early, when you can wait and make it a RUSH job?  Luckily, the Sonic guys had a one-day opening in their schedule and I snuck in.  I had the song picked out, so it was pretty quick work.  I went in with the expectation that the song would include me on vocals and Tony Bohnenkamp (Sonic co-owner) on piano.  I envisioned a real stripped-down rendition of Jolly Old St. Nicholas, very earthy.  Tony had other plans.  He had me play guitar and left it at that.  It sounded pretty good “his” way, so I adjusted my expectations.  I love veering off in new directions and making little mistakes in the studio and have come to embrace them wholeheartedly.  They somehow always end up being the brilliant, magic part.

The session began with me sitting down to go over my guitar part while Tony built a “cage” of microphones around me.  I played guitar into a SM57 instrument mic (typical), another mic I should know the name of (but don’t), and a very cool $3,000 ribbon mic.  Ahhh, sweet.  ”Be very careful with this one”, Tony said. It made me sound like, well, not a million bucks – but at least 3,000 bucks.

Once I’m behind my mic wall, I’m pretty much not going anywhere until we get a few takes recorded.  It was a good morning; it is a simple song and we made quick progress.  Vocals were next and that’s easily my favorite part.  I could have sung it over and over all day.  Again, I got to sing into an old (let’s say “vintage” rather than “antique”) mic worth a ton of money.  I wore headphones while I was singing and I could hear every nuance of the room, the mic and my voice.  I was in heaven.  I love my job.

Now we wait.  We give it a few days without listening to it and meet up early next week to make any modifications — with fresh ears.  Then, we haul it over to iTunes and it should be available in about 10 days – just in time!  It will be a digital download “single” for this year, but I may gather up all these Christmas songs I’ve recorded and put out an entire album one of these Novembers.  It will be a last minute thing, of course…

Thanks for listening!

Mary

This week I was given the chance to go back in time. The years evaporated.

My husband and I were given some of the best advice of our lives, by Evgueni Ananiev, when our first daughter was born.  Evgueni was a dear friend, a colleague and a brilliant Russian scientist.

When our first baby was born, Evgueni, an amateur filmmaker told us, “You’ve got to document a life.  You must go and purchase a recording devise.”  Hear this in your head with a thick Russian accent.

My husband was working as a post doc at the University and we lived in a tiny apartment off-campus.  Every item we bought for the baby was second hand.  There was no money for a recording devise.  But my husband listened to Evgeni and went shopping.  It’s still the best one-two punch of good advice followed by action of our married life.

We recorded.  And recorded.  And recorded.  I focused our fancy, brand new, state-of-the-art, way expensive, 8mm tape, video camera on our beautiful baby while she slept.  Yup, hours of her sleeping.  We recorded her every waking moment as well … for about 3 months, until the excitement of the baby-camera combination wore off.  We reduced our recording to a modest 4-5 hours a day.

Along comes baby number 2.  Rinse, repeat.

Fast forward to 2009.  I’m in the basement with an 18-gallon Rubbermaid bin FULL of 8mm video tapes.  We’ve got a new digital video camera.  My kids childhoods are trapped in that Rubbermaid bin.

I investigate my options and purchase the perfect solution.  “Easy VHS (and 8mm) to DVD for Mac” software.  Yeah right.

We install, call, reboot and restart.  It won’t work.  Then the camera breaks.  The camera being an essential part of the video to digital transfer…

I surrender and hire a friend to help us.  “I’ve got 18 gallons of life to transfer, can you help?”  He signs on.  He cannot immediately figure it out either but he knows we’ve got trouble with our computer for sure.  Then he has his own baby.  (I advise him to buy a camera).  Months go by.

Last week we decided to re-open this Rubbermaid can of worms.  I turned on the Screen Share two days in a row and left the house.  Hard drives were backed up, drives were wiped clean, updates were downloaded and data re-installed.  All done remotely.  Technology is cool.

“Try it again,” he said.

And there it was.  It worked.  The tape stuck in the camera was dated September 2001.  Ten years ago to the month.  I burned a DVD of the transferred footage and stuck it in the DVD player in the other room.

I sat there mesmerized.  The first shot was my 14month old daughter gently placing a new roll of paper towels in a sink full of water.  I was secretly taping her.  You hear me sneak up on her.  I say “Ah ha … so this is how the paper towels end up in the sink.  We don’t put paper towels in the sink, honey.  Can you please put them on the counter instead?”

Wow … I was patient back then.  Holy crap.

She looks at the camera.  She’s been caught.  She smiles, puts the paper towels on the counter and nods ‘yes’.  She climbs down off the little footstool and toddles away, the camera following her.

I watched the hour long tape of my girls. I watched it with the girls when they got home from school and I watched it again with my husband that night.  Something shifted inside of me.  I remembered who those little girls were and maybe I remembered who I was.

I was so patient back then.  I never raised my voice.  We had no homework, no grades, no stress, no schedules.  All we did was play, share, help, read, dance, sing and be kind to one another.  We had so much time.

All I know is that watching those innocent little girls and their pure joy for life was like hitting the reset button for me.   When did I get so rushed?  Why is everything such a big deal?  Do I show them half as much love today as I used to then?

I wanted to go back to those sweet little girls, tuck them in beside me and read a stack of books, just like we used to.  My heart was starting to ache inside my chest.  I was extra kind to those teenagers when they walked in the house.

Parenting doesn’t stay the same folks.  It changes.  The moving target of struggles and challenges are new and tougher every day.  I have no idea when this will end.

My parenting advise.  Take a lot of video of your kids.  Even if you can’t afford it.  Share a high-end camera with another set of parents.  Split the cost.  It’s do-able.  It’s going to be over in the blink of an eye.

Then go back and visit these tapes when your toddlers become teenagers and they stretch their wings and push against you and everything else in their lives.  Because this too, this pushing, is age appropriate behavior.  It will remind you of what a miracle they are.  When the stress of everyday life beats it out of you and them, you can remember.  I caught on tape the day my daughter learned how to nod.  She didn’t talk until she was almost 2 so this communication was awesome.  I was jumping for joy that she learned to to nod … how to confirm in the affirmative!

Oh yes, it’s the little things.  So grateful to have found the reset button.  So grateful for a husband who listens to good advice.

There’s lots of new in my life right now. My husband has a new job. That’s the “space that has opened up” that I spoke of in last month’s blog. Thank you, angel that looks out for my family. He loved working for his old company and they were very good to us, but it was time. He found a new position with a fabulous company and didn’t miss a beat; he snuck in a two-week vacation between the old and new jobs, surfing in Costa Rica with a buddy from grade school. He returned tanned and relaxed. May everyone be so lucky.

I’m new to Craigslist and eBay and a friend of mine is selling stuff for me. This is stuff that I’m pulling out of my basement (see last month’s blog…). It’s taking a lot of time, but I’m really making progress. Last night we sold a Wave Master punching bag. Brand new, never really used at all. Someone else needs it way more than me. I need the space that it leaves behind.

The next thing to be listed will be an 84” tall, solid oak bookshelf, made in Pennsylvania, USA. It’s beautiful. But I want the space that it will leave behind more than I want the bookshelf. It was a gift for my husband. I bought it for his art room in the basement. He gets these art magazines and years ago they did an entire issue on famous artists studios. I examined every picture and made notes of what was consistently found in each studio.

With every birthday, Father’s Day and Christmas since, I have given him something from these photos for his studio. The first studio gift was “table space”. All of the studio pictures showed lots of sturdy, horizontal tables (overloaded with paint brushes, pens, pencils, tape, paint, coffee cups and wine bottles. Man, artists are messy…And I think they drink a lot). At the time my artist had zero table space, so that was my first gift.

I will just add here that buying gifts for my husband is no easy task. He only buys products made in the USA. Period. No child labor, sweatshop or third world purchases; unless it’s “Fair Trade”. You get used to it. If one has the time, one can find just about anything made in the good old USA.

Sooooooo, I bought this oak bookshelf for his studio. Turns out it was too tall to get down in the basement. Great. Had to keep it in the living room. Now I want that living room space back. We found a bookshelf for his studio that is the perfect size. The new bookshelf is now filled to the hilt with paint, paintbrushes, paper, pens, pencils, more paint….more paper. It’s messy. But it’s his room, not mine. Some artists thrive in a messy studio and to clean it for them isn’t “helpful”, (thank you, John Brommel). I do corral coffee cups that have been down there for longer than a week…I mean, it’s an art studio, not a biological lab.

Space. It’s becoming my mantra for 2011. Open, empty space. In which to write.

I’m cleaning the basement.  It’s May.  The kids are out of school, summer is here and I’ve got an album to write.  For anyone keeping track, this is the album that I was suppose to turn in to my Producers laaaaast June.  I have psyched myself out.  I asked for the one thing I wanted most of all….and I got it.  In March 2010, I asked Kathrin Shorr and Tim Burlingame of Sweet Talk Radio to produce my next album.  They said yes.  Admittedly, I never thought they’d say yes.  This immediately threw me into a state of creative paralysis.  I couldn’t write a grocery list, couldn’t write a card, couldn’t write a song.  You try working with your heroes, it’s daunting.  But now that I’ve ‘failed’ to turn in an album, it’s like, I’m free.  I’ve failed and it’s cool to have that out of the way.  I can’t possibly disappoint anyone by actually turning IN songs…because I could always turn in nothing.  Yes, I see that this is a little bit twisted.

So I’m making space.  Space and time are hard things to come by when you’re a parent.  But it seems the universe is on my side.  Space has opened wide in my family’s life this spring.  I’m not going to blow this chance.

I keep these little notebooks.  Lists of things I need to do each day.  I cross things off as I get them done.  If there isn’t a line through it, it ain’t done.  I keep looking back at what’s not done, day after day. But, you know how there’s always an email that you need to reply to, and it somehow gets farther and farther down the page until you don’t even see it anymore?  And how, if there’s 20 of these, you don’t even want to open your email anymore?  Yeah, me neither.

When one of my little notebooks of unfinished “to do lists” get too big….I start a new notebook.  I can’t bear to even look at the old one anymore.  I’ll pretend to “lose” it.  But it’s still there.  Haunting me.  I’ve probably been avoiding people.  Because I owe them an email.  If it’s you, I apologize.  I’ve been so busy.  I’ve been avoiding writing an album.  Do you even know how time consuming that is?

There’s a giant pile of unnecessary stuff in my garage now.  There’s a giant garage sale on my horizon and there’s a giant space that has opened up in my basement.  That’s my writing space.  Wish me luck.  Don’t email.  Bring food, the kids need to eat.

January is always a time for resting and taking stock for me. Time for figuring out what worked last year and what didn’t. I’m not big into resolutions. I’m more of head down into the wind, slow and steady kind of a girl. I like the Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird” approach. Set your goals, logical or otherwise, and set about attaining them, one by one. Go, you’ve got a year. And that’s what I do. On January 1st, I take a cup of coffee and go off with my notebook. I’ve got my dog-eared, tape-covered, yellowed pieces of paper from all of the previous years. The goal pages look bedraggled because for a year these sheets hangs in my music room and the sun shines on them every day, fading my written words. Almost like it’s trying to fade my resolve. But it doesn’t.

I always read my old goals first. This is the “taking stock” part. This is where you see the progress. I love it when progress happens in a big flourishy way, but it rarely does. Progress happens slow and steady more often than not. Am I still writing songs? Yes. Progress. Was I invited to perform at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010? Yes. Progress. Count ‘em all, big and small. One step forward and fewer steps back as I get older and perhaps a little smarter about the music biz.

This year I’m also thinking about the things that aren’t so concrete (like “play the Iowa Women’s Music Festival”) but instead, can’t be easily measured. I’m taking stock of the relationships I’ve formed or strengthened the past year. Thinking about it now, I never written that down, but it’s got to be about the most rewarding part of this music life. The people I meet, late night jams with new friends after the shows, offering up a bed and a hot meal when they pass through town and wow Des Moines with their mad talents. Those aren’t goals I set, but they are rewards and the witnesses to the work. Those are my fringe benefits, instead of a fat 401(k).

I’m big into writing your goals down. A fancy-dan Harvard study proved that the people who write down their goals are far more likely to achieve them. What are you waiting for? I’ve been following Josh Ritter’s blog since October 2010. I love what he suggests and freely offers to songwriters for their own goal setting. Josh’s method works for anyone, not just songwriters. I love structure. He offers it, bird by bird.

And I’ve got a new trick up my sleeve this year. I’m doing Christine Kane’s “Word of the Year”. I’m 21 days in and I can already feel it finding a place in my bones. I predict I’ll be doing this one forever. It’s a keeper and a calming alternative to New Year’s resolutions.

Once written down, I like to hang my goals where I have to look at them every day. Not to taunt me, but to remind me. It’s nice to have a roadmap of where I’m going for the year. Determination can wane in the cold of February and one can be lulled into complacency by the dizzying heat of July. It takes a razor sharp focus to get up every day and pour gasoline on your career. My goals are my GPS. My goals are my gasoline.

Josh Ritter blog

My dad doesn’t drive anymore, but that’s a good thing. Dad is 87 years old and has been forgetting things for a few years. Us kids have known that it was time for him to give up his keys. But let me tell you folks, you don’t just ”take” the car keys away from your aging parent.

I don’t live at home anymore. I moved away. It’s my siblings who’ve stayed who do the heavy lifting. They deal with the daily dilemmas that arise from dad’s declining health, his forgetfulness and his anger at what age has taken from him. I told them one by one that I thought we needed to take dad’s car keys away. They knew and agreed, but hey, we’re all still a little afraid of our dad. He was a formidable presence growing up. Discipline was his middle name. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” stuff. No one was spoiled.

I decided about 3 years ago that this situation called for a good cop, bad cop approach. I was gonna be the bad cop. It seemed only fair. Yes, dad had a ”right” to drive, but I feel that one loses that right when you’re not on top of your game behind the wheel; the rights of the public supersede an individual’s right when it comes to safety. I didn’t deal with the day-to-day of dad’s care and if someone needed to confront him, I would do it. All the kids were already talking to him about it, but I was going to push it.

I thought my dad should stop driving, and I told him so. In fact, I told him every chance I got. I knew my sibs could do it only with kid gloves (see remarks on discipline, above) so I began calling him every week. I started the conversation exactly the same way each time, “Hi Dad. Are you still driving?” He responded, “Hell yes” or “What do you mean? Of course I am. I’m fine to drive, Mary Kay.” I told him point blank that I did not think he was ”fine to drive.” I said that he had a stellar driving record and that’s the way he should go out. I asked him to think about how he would feel if he caused an accident and injured (or worse) a young mother and her children. I didn’t beat around the bush. He put forth his argument and we agreed not to agree. We did this every week. I always ended by asking him to “just consider it.”

You take away a man’s keys and you take away his mobility, and really so much more than that. It’s a milestone, and not a good one. How will he get groceries? I called the cab company in town and got the details. But try convincing a man who owned a Ford Model T that he can just “take a cab.” My dad has probably never taken a cab in his whole life.

I was home this year for Thanksgiving to see Dad and my sisters and brothers. They sold dad’s car last month. I’m not sure he remembers the details of the sale. All the better. The streets in my hometown are safer tonight, folks. I thank my sibs for doing the thankless work of prying those keys out of his hands and getting that car gone. It’s not work for the faint of heart.

I hope you all get a chance to go through this with your parents. It will mean they lived to be a ripe old age. A good friend of mine lost his father suddenly and unexpectedly last month. This is the first Thanksgiving without his dad. And another friend last year, this is his second Thanksgiving with out his dad. I’ve read his Face book posts; two years out ain’t a picnic, he’s still grieving. Another good friend never met his father–although he was alive, his father never attempted to make contact with him. If these friends knew about my dad and his driving dilemma, I’m sure they envy me in my position of parenting an aging parent. No credit goes to me; it’s my sibs who do the daily work.

We went to say goodbye to dad this morning before we headed back to Iowa. It was 9:30 a.m. and he was just waking up. This man who awoke before 5 am to a hard days work every day of his adult life. He was a little ”foggy” and misremembered, thinking I was on my way back to Missouri, not Iowa, but that’s okay, that’s close. My husband asked him if he “had any big plans for the upcoming week?” and Dad responded, “Hell, no, I’m 87……what do you want? Chimes?!”

Dad after getting out of the Navy

Not the Model T, but another of his cars

With his favorite kid, (and 3 of the other kids too)

A Thankful Thanksgiving 2010, no chimes.