the seven year mix

With absolutely none of the seven-year-itch. Here's our annual playlist, only two months late. If you want the bonus tracks (Rosie and Owen originals), you'll have to get a copy on CD.

a few things in September

Ballet. This picture is so cute it is driving me crazy. Maybe I didn't actually ask the other moms if I could put their children's picture on the internets. My apologies (tell me if you want it removed). It's just too much.

Damages. On the other extreme, I've been enjoying the disturbing show Damages. For most of the show's run, I've had a personal policy of no-damages-before-bedtime, because believe me, you do not want damages-dreams. In this, it's fifth and final season, though, it's got less violence but just as much drama. The performances by Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, as two damaged and power-hungry attorneys, are extraordinary. Are they the only women on tv who are allowed to be as complex and ambitious, as intriguing and abhorrent, as men? (Well, besides the female Prime Minister on Borgen-- yes.) The series finale airs Wednesday on Direct TV.

The Year Six Playlist. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about why we make anniversary mix CDs. Here's a link to listen to Year Six on spotify. My current favorite song is track 2, by The Walkmen. I need what it says about not striving for perfection, but being open to mistakes and failure and correction, a life of wholeness.

Lit. Currently loving this memoir by poet Mary Karr.

Certified Copy. We actually watched this film a few months ago, but somebody reminded me of it this week. It's a French film by an Iranian director and set in Italy. (Actually, parts were filmed in Cortona, just a few miles from where I spent a semester (Mollie, Anna, watch it!)). It's a beautiful and thought-provoking look at relationships, gender, and how we create our stories.

Walks. I usually walk Rosie to preschool, a little over a mile each way, and right now the weather is just achingly perfect, the kind that fills you with nostalgia. Go for a walk.

Google hang outs! Yesterday I used google plus for the first time, to have a video chat with my brothers (in Denver and Tulsa) and our parents (in Arkansas). It was super fun and would have been perfect if Sister Kate could have been there too.

our sixth anniversary, and divorce

Just after our one year anniversary, Jack and I flew from Hanoi, where we had spent a month leading an English language camp, to Seattle, where we had decided to make our new home.

My memories of that first jet-lagged week in Seattle are both clear and cloudy. We stayed at Jack's sister's place, in the spare room, and took dim evening walks around Greenlake. Everything was grey, cool, clean, and silent, compared to the sensory overload of Hanoi; we lay in the double bed on top of a white down comforter and watched The Office on DVD, long hours of the night when we couldn't sleep. In the mid-morning we ate yogurt and granola at a sun-dappled table and wondered precisely what kind of new land we had discovered.

Jack's sister and her husband shared their house with Anna and Luke, all of them Taylor grads who had married just after graduation and found their ways to Seattle. The four of them welcomed us into their little community in the seconds before it began disintegrating.

I always think of Anna and Luke around my wedding anniversary, because that week they were making a mix cd to celebrate their third year of marriage. They had compiled a playlist of their favorite songs from the year, and were burning it to CDs, hand decorating covers, to share with all their friends.

They had made something lovely together that otherwise would never have existed.

We adopted that idea, and every year around our anniversary I post our song list, Jack draws some cover art, and we pass CDs out. Every year I think about how I don't listen to as much music as I used to, and every year I think about the first mix cd Jack made for me, that softened my angry heart in Chiangmai, and every year I think about Anna and Luke.

Anna and Luke divorced two years ago. I don't think they ever got to a year six playlist. I never knew them as well as I wanted to, and I can't really say if life is better for them each now, apart, than it was then, together, but whenever I think of them (which is whenever I think of my own anniversary) I'm sad; because whenever there is love, and then there isn't love anymore, something beautiful is lost, broken. It sounds cliched, but: they were so young for it to end.

I wish we could go back to that cool late summer in Seattle, before so many things were broken (though some are stronger now), and just share a house again, and watch tv late into the night, and eat breakfast across the table from each other. A little more openhearted this time, a little more wise, we'd listen together to the music they made.

the wooden anniversary

Songs we loved in our fifth year of marriage. Coming soon to a discman (what, you prefer a boombox?) near you.

1. John the Rabbit - Rosemary Peterson
2. Walking Far From Home - Iron and Wine
3. Too Much - Sufjan Stevens
4. Lovesong - Adele
5. Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes
6. Runaway - The National
7. If the Sun Stops Shining - Damien Jurado and Richard Swift
8. Oh Yeah By the Way - Over the Rhine
9. I Want the World to Stop - Belle and Sebastian
10. God is Love - The Innocence Mission
11. Swimming - Breathe Owl Breathe
12. Love is All - The Tallest Man on Earth
13. While I Shovel the Snow - The Walkmen
14. The Way It Goes - Gillian Welch
15. Poor in Love - Destroyer
16. Beacon Hill - Damien Jurado
17. Hosanna in the Forest - Danielson

Our Fourth Anniversary Mix

Every year around our anniversary we make a mix cd of some of our favorite songs of the past year.

Granted, in our fourth year of marriage we didn't have quite as much time for listening to music. Rosie kept me busy, and kept me listening to Elizabeth Mitchell, and Jack was a little busy finishing his MA. We didn't get to see too much live music, either: Jack saw The Mountain Goats in November 2009. We both saw Rosie Thomas's Christmas show in December 2009, and then in Little Rock we had the pleasure of seeing Both/And. I also saw Midlake play in Little Rock in January 2010. And we saw Rosie Thomas again in April 2010 at SPU.

But without further ado, here it is. I'll send some copies out shortly.

3rd year playlist

 
Each year around our anniversary, Jack and I make an 80 minute playlist of our favorite songs from the past year.

Here's this year's list:

Rolling Sea - Vetiver
Brand New Start - Little Joy
Tightrope - Yeasayer
Working Poor - Horse Feathers
I’ll Fight - Wilco
God Made the Automobile - Iron & Wine
But For You Who Fear My Name - The Welcome Wagon
Natural Disaster - Andrew Bird
Catholic Girl - Denison Witmer
Street Flash - Animal Collective
Slowness - Calexico
Sharing a Gibson With Martin Luther King, Jr - Lambchop
Africa, 178 - The INnocence Mission
How’s Forever Been Baby - Elvis Perkins
The Hour of Sleep - Daniel Martin Moore
Mr. Gowrie - Charles Spearin