Not All Who Wander Are Lost

If It’s Monday Night, It Must Be Tributary

It’s getting cold: below freezing at nights and the cars covered in frost from dusk till dawn. The frost melts in the sun quickly on the windowpanes; they fog and drip behind the changing table as I iron the folds out of my khakis over coffee in the morning. Some day soon they’ll be too iced over for Willow to wave to Daddy as he drives off in the morning, and it will be winter and bare, frozen fingers and white from here to the other side of the silent river valley. For now, it’s just chilly, the air sharp like snow, the throat dry.

The coyotes wake us up at night. We keep the cat inside, where he sleeps on a basket of sweaters, or sometimes on the t-shirts in my bureau drawer.

Willow was up at four this morning, napped just an hour while I was gone; you’d expect she’d be tired, but there I was at seven, then eight, then eight thirty, still in the playroom. Her language and her self-hood have brought her to the cusp of a new role in my life; where yesterday we watched her (and watched over her) in play, now we simply hang out. She wants to talk to us, to play with us, to bring us into her world as much as we want to help her experience ours. She asks us to do things as much as we ask her to do things. And, in the words of Martha "what do you mean, I can't paint my jail cell in subtle tones of salmon and eggshell?" Stewart, It’s A Good Thing.

Tonight’s radio show playlist follows, as always. I almost didn’t make it – Willow didn’t go to bed until almost nine.

Tributary 11/10/03

Bob Dorough – Too Much Coffee Man
Phish – Wolfman’s Brother
REM – Stand
Beck – Devil’s Haircut
Joss Stone – Fell In Love With A Boy
Skavoovie and the Epitones – Subway Joe
Spacehog – Senses Working Overtime
That song with the chorus that starts "I would like to hold your little hand…"
Natalie Merchant – Soldier Soldier
Bert – The National Association of "W" Lovers
The Gourds – El Paso
Girlyman – Hey Rose
Brooks Williams – Birth Of The True
Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem – Cocktail Swing
Rusted Root – You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Suzanne Vega – Book Of Dreams
Joss Stone – Some Kind Of Wonderful
The Salesman and Ernie – Would You Like To Buy An "O"?
Glen Phillips – Have A Little Fun With Me
Ben Folds Five – Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
Natalie Merchant – Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow
Lucy Kaplansky – Ten Year Night
Ernie and Bert – The "R" Machine
Mark Erelli – Take My Ashes To The River
Bruce Cockburn – Blueberry Hill