Wow, the kid rocks.
That’s high praise in some circles. When such a revelation arrives in a "Hey, Mom" e-mail from a college daughter, it can be slightly alarming.
I received this greeting from the dorm room — the nice, cozy dorm room for which I pay dearly.
The kid shared in her breezy way that an entire rock band was "in San Jose last night &needed a place to stay, so they came over &crashed on the floor in our room. I was kind of hesitant, but it turned out to be really fun. … 4 cute guys in our room made us incredibly popular for the evening."
I’ll bet. Get this, too.
She said the singer-guitar guy "asked me to come along" on the road for a show in Santa Barbara, Calif., "but I didn’t want to skip that many classes" — classes, I might add, for which I pay.
But worry? Nah.
I fooled you. This isn’t about parental fears of a daughter being lured into groupiedom.
That singer-guitar guy I mentioned? He’s just David — David Muhlstein, son of my husband’s brother. He’s family.
There he is in our photo album, wearing nothing but a diaper in my mother-in-law’s living room. There he is 20 years ago at my wedding reception, on the lawn overlooking Puget Sound at what’s now the elegant Charles at Smuggler’s Cove in Mukilteo. He’s got a bow tie and little plaid shorts.
And here he is, all grown up, posed with his band Girl Repellent for a CD cover picture. Funny, he’s tall and dark, but the little-boy smile is the same. "The name ‘Girl Repellent’ started out as a joke until a better name was found, but that never happened," says the band’s Web site, www.girlrepellent.com.
So my nephew’s band has made it, if not big, at least big enough to tour from home in Arizona to the California coast. If you’re into this sort of thing — punk, I think it is — the band has played with the Ataris, MxPx and Fenix-TX.
On the Web, under "Tour Info," we learn that "Ben only has one shoe now because it fell out of the van somewhere in New Mexico." Great, that’s what kind of tour it is. I’ll admit to being thrilled my daughter didn’t tag along, although she had a swell time at the San Jose concert.
At the same time, I’m thrilled about the connection.
For years, we drove to California every spring so our children would know their cousins. We worried about living so far from my husband’s family down south and mine in Eastern Washington. We hoped all 15 cousins would try to stay in touch.
And they’ve done it, with no interference from their too-busy, baby-boomer parents. They’ve done it with no small thanks to e-mail, which, despite all that junky, unsolicited spam, is wonderful glue for holding families together.
May these kids — I still think of them as babies under a grandmother’s Christmas tree — continue to chat and scheme and crash on each others’ floors.
And Miss College? Rock on, kid. Just don’t forget it’s nearly finals week.
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