Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The Logical Song

I spent half of my childhood in the car. In LA, you had little choice, given the thick lanes of traffic and the unwalked sidewalks, mostly occupied by the homeless pushing their barbed grocery carts stuffed with debris. One time a homeless woman we regularly saw cruising Little Santa Monica near to where we lived, ripped my dad's turn signal right out of his car at a stoplight. 

It wasn't all bad stuck in traffic. It all depended on Ma's mood—where she was in her cycle, or how long it has been since she'd eaten—and/or where we were headed: therapy, drum lessons, the market, a dental appointment, the beach. No matter, if the radio happened to play the right song at the right time (which we had shared custody of, Ma and I: she opted for talk radio psychologist, Dr Toni Grant, whereas I shifted back and forth between KROQ, KMET, and KLOS), all was perfect.

So that  day in early February, just past my brother's 10th birthday when he was gifted Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" record, the Logical Song came on the radio and alone with her in the car, away from my brother and his friends, I could ask the questions. What does it mean, Ma? What does "sent me away' mean? What's a vegetable? I pictured this poor guy banished, lost in a boat on a river beneath marmalade skies, along with all the lonely people: Father McKenzie, Penny Lane, Bad Bad Leroy Brown and the rest of the misfit folks I'd gotten to know through the countless records we spun at home over the years. 

"Well honey..." she'd begin, "it's about growing up."

I tried to picture it. I couldn't. "But how does that make you  a vegetable?"

"Oh for Christ Sakes, Roxanne."

But how could Ma begin to answer these questions, to translate the age of experience (logically), to the age of innocence, where I was still living "joyfully," when life was still "wonderful, a miracle"? She did the best she could and the best she could, was the best she good, because bless Ma, with her ERA bumper sticker,  fearless claiming of her space in fierce LA traffic ("up yours you creep! Those fuckers better get the hell off the road!") and her open minded heart, she kept answering those questions that kept coming day after day, week after week, year after year until I was old enough to get out of her car and drive away on my own in my own car and roll down the windows and blast the radio and wait for the day when The Logical Song came on, as I sent myself out of innocence, sent myself away to learn the answers first hand, to see for myself how to be logical.

And that's what Ma was trying to tell me that day in the car as the melodies swirled deeply,  keening callingly, addictively, between us. She didn't say it exactly, but she was trying to tell me that if ever there came a time "at night, when all the world's asleep, and questions run so deep," like they did for that simple, aching, longing, searching man in The Logical Song, it meant I was normal and that I was going to be okay. Painful as those questions would get, they would eventually lead to light, perhaps even back to innocence where life was so magical.