Linda, Emmy Lou, Dolly, and the Six-Year-Old Conscience

"We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn't that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it's a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it's all mixed up together, it's us: humanness."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 21

Still Jan 30, 2009

We (the kids and I) have been enjoying an album by Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris, and Dolly Parton called Trio 2, that we have on loan from the library. I think it won a Grammy ten years ago. It’s an hour of the most exquisite harmonies imaginable.

When I first put it on a few days ago, Charlie fell out of an irritable mood and into a trance. He lay down in the middle room on the rug, mindfully gazing up at the ceiling. Later, on the track "Blue Train," I came around the corner and he was blissfully moving through the living room. “I’m pretending I’m flying an airplane, Mom.”

Enchanted as well, naturally thoughts progressed in my mind toward how to obtain a copy. itunes would be ideal - $9.99 -- and, while less expensive, is out. I could call Bull Moose Music in the Old Port and order up a copy….but it’ll be costing me $16.

Or…gulp…I could just accidentally on purpose import it onto the family computer. I know this is wrong but the music is so tempting and the $16 seems so out of reach.

I went upstairs to check on the six-year-old — who was on the toilet with the door open so he didn’t miss any of the songs.

“Mom, is this the radio?” he asked. He knows to ask this so that he knows if he can hope to have something put on repeat. (He’s asked many times in the car “Put this on repeat” and it’s turned out to be the radio.) "No, it’s a CD," I told him.

I mention casually that I would like to obtain a copy of this album, or maybe I’ll just copy the songs onto the computer. I am treading on thin ice, looking to see if the six-year-old will notice the problem with this idea.

“Mom,” he whispers while peeking at me around the corner, “I think that’s illegal.”