So bye, buy miss american pie

"I drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry..." her little voice carries over the railing, down the stairs. Some mornings, we just wake up singing... still free, fair use and all that.

I add in, "for ten years we've been on our own, and moss grows, fat out of Rolling Stone, but, that's not how it used to be..."

And I let the water run over last night's dishes. We could not do her nature walk last night, mostly because she told me about it in the shower, this morning, with the water falling over our naked bodies.

"Mommy," she asked yesterday, "qué es un sádico?" (this was all my fault, all all all my fault) We were at the dentists, being ignored, abandoned and gouged, and she sat with a blanket of lead over her, (why do they need to x-ray every time?) "Es para que los rayos X no penetren tus órganos," I explain, when no explanation is asked for nor required. "Te acuerdas de las ondas de luz ultravioleta? las que te hacen daño con el sol? Es una idea similar, es para bloquear, dispersar..."
She nods, in agreement, she remembers, and then with a sneaky smile, "now can you tell me all that in English so I can understand it?"
"No! You understood me," she laughs at me, and I tickle her tummy, sneaking my hand under the leaden overgarment.
"Feed me Seymour, feed me all night long..." I sing to her and she giggles, and I laugh with her because the image of Rick Moranis and the singing venus fly trap and a very young Steve Martin as a sadistic dentist on a motorcycle with a leather jacket spring fully formed from my head.
"Oh, es como una de esas plantas que comen moscas..." she meditates after I explain the story to her. Sort of, I muse to myself, like Sweeney Todd (her very favorite thing to listen to in the car, and to which I always say, "no, no more") "Freely flows the blood of those who moralize!" she bellows and I smile despite myself.
"What is a sadist? Well..." I begin, "someone who derives pleasure from causing other people pain." "Todos los dentistas son sádicos?" she ventures, waiting for my confirmation. "No, no sweetie, no they don't mean to cause you pain..." (I wonder to myself if this is true).
They mean to cause my wallet pain, that is for certain, as the smiling accountant dentist (they pull of a perfect good cop/ bad cop routine) steps in to show me how they would charge me 1400$ for the work that they need to do on I.'s dientinis (as we like to call them at our house). I say, "Yes, but I wouldn't be paying for any of these because they are covered by insurance, are they not?" He agrees, flustered because I saw through his failed attempt at psychological manipulation. "But, if you pay up front, instead of 495$ you get our discount and pay only 292$. Just sign here." He whips off an explanation of the rights that I am to sign away, and I know that I irritate him by stopping and reading each paragraph in its entirety before signing. I hand over the plastic, because when I ask, "so I can pay you before the work is done at the next appointment." and he responds, "No, to get this price, you need to pay before we make the appointment." (this is my child for fuck sake, not a car dealership)and I grit my teeth and stand in growing irritation as the inept secretarial staff show little to no interest in customer service.

When I hear "And while Lennon (Lenin?) read the book of Marx, the quartet practiced in the park, and we sang dirges in the dark, the day, the music died..." I can't help smiling, at my kid, while thinking of the movie that I saw last night, Temporada de patos (Fernando Eimbcke) whose gorgeous black and white was something that an international audience might consider Jarmuschy (think Stranger Than Paradise) but those familiar with the Mexican idiom would have to immediately think - Gabriel Figeroa meets the Mexican 21st century landscape... and the line in which the little girl, hanging on the liminality of her inbetweeness, says, "look, there's four of us like the Beatles" and the boy responds, "But the Beatles were all men," and she retorts, "Lennon was a woman." And the man who became an ethologist, and couldn't find work, finally told his boss to stuff it, and quit his dead-end pizza delivery job... but I get ahead of myself...

So I smile, and the irritation at my celular company and their ineptitude, is soothed, now that they have rectified their mistakes. Every month it is something. And I write it all down, because, well, because I have to. Because, like I was telling a new found friend last night, that is the real benefit of writing, no need for a real human on the other end to process with, at least not in real time.

There were no tears this morning, because I forgot to say goodbye. Yesterday there was drama, and not in the good way because I failed to say a third goodbye, but today, after signing up for the class that I will teach this Friday (I have been doing cooking classes at I.'s school for the past month) I smile at the soup pot of songs, and think that the idea of a melting pot is so bland only an American could think of it. And more hot pies, made of hypocrites, a la Sweeney, might be a solution to all this.