Two Evenings with John Denver

John Denver
John Denver

Two friends of ours are writing a show about John Denver. They asked me to jot down some memories of his visit to Beijing when I was living there as a kid. I sent this draft along to them and thought I’d share it here too.

We were living in Beijing, China around 1980 when John Denver came through (this was third or fourth grade for me). There were few Americans in Beijing at the time, so the visit was surprisingly intimate.

I remember having him over to dinner at our apartment. I don’t know how the invitation happened, exactly, but John Denver was a major rock star in our home—the family sound track. He accompanied our road trips, was my first choice to peck out on the piano after lessons, and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was the anthem we sang whenever my father flew off on trips. We had a young woman named Annie living with us at the time, and she was so excited that I thought she was going to pass out when he came through the door.

Of the conversation that night I don’t remember much. From my perspective, it was typical adult banter, not very exciting. I recall snippets about his trip, his song-writing process, and life back home in the states. It was all very easy-going, and Denver was funny and personable. The only thing that sticks from the conversation is his explanation of how his vocal range improved over the course of a tour. At the beginning of a tour he couldn’t hit the highest notes but his voice would loosen up further after each show. By the end of the tour, he had access to his full range.

Annie and I scored the best seats at dinner, flanking him, and he remained gregarious and fun. He asked if we had any requests for the concert the following night, and I asked for “Grandma’s Feather Bed,” the best song EVER. Annie, of course, requested “Annie’s Song.”

The next evening was the concert at the embassy—a small gathering in the ambassador’s living room. Kids sat on the soft rug up front with parents on chairs and couches behind. This was probably my first real concert, or at least the first one that I enjoyed. I remember it being a glorious night with lots of spontaneous dancing and laughter. Denver took requests for most of the show. For some of his obscure songs he couldn’t remember all the lines, so he would make them up or ask the audience for help. The kids found this endlessly amusing. There were also a few songs that went too high, so he couldn’t pull them off. Most of them, though, were perfect. At some point I raised my hand and reminded him to play his best song, Grandma’s Feather Bed, prompting laughter from the grown-ups. He played it with verve as we leaped and laughed.

That’s all I remember from the concert. As I grew up and developed my own tastes, John Denver fell out of favor. He represented my parents’ music—not cool. Twenty-some years after the Beijing concert, however, and a few years after Denver’s death, I bought an iPod and visited the iTunes store; my first purchase was, “An Evening With John Denver.”

Snow Day

First snow day I’ve had since the seventies. But Griffin’s preschool was still on, so we took the kids via sled. We should all travel by sled more.

Whole30, Day 19

Second and third weeks have gone pretty well, overall. No epiphanies or wild bursts of energy, but I feel fairly stable and the cravings are less extreme. Still some funny food dreams now and then, like last night’s extended episode featuring Dr. Pepper and chocolate.

The biggest challenge for me has been the afternoons at school. I get the munchies big-time when I’m working at my desk. Not sure if its just something to ride out or if it means I’m missing some nutrient or something like that. Is there a “perfect snack” that would calm the cravings without exacerbating them? Or should the lunch mix be altered?

One thing I have been depending on is dates. We bought some tubs of Medjool dates from Costco and I used them to combat my cravings for other banned snacks. (If you’re a date-fan, these mongo dates are pretty spectacular.) Technically they are allowed on the Whole30 since they are a natural fruit, but they are sugar bombs—nature’s candy. This week I’ve been pulling back on them, culminating in a complete moratorium yesterday. My sense is that the dates were basically feeding the beast, maintaining a hunger for sugar. Possibly coincidentally, I felt deeply fatigued yesterday. By late afternoon I was wrecked, completely out of gas. Not sure if this was directly related to less sugar or if it was simply a result of a poor night’s sleep combined with a challenging day at school. We’ll see how today goes.

Whole30, Day 7

Sarah and I embarked this week (starting Monday, February 11) on a 30-day nutritional reset, the Whole30 program. It’s associated with the “paleo” movement which emphasizes meat, fruit and vegetables over grains, legumes, and dairy. Processed foods, sugar, etc. are frowned upon, but can be used in moderation. The Whole30 is more strict, banning dairy, grains, legumes, sugar and artificial ingredients altogether.

This is not normally my sort of thing. I dislike “diets” and I’m suspicious of nutritional fads. But Sarah’s been dabbling in paleo for a while, and it’s gone well for her. She decided recently, with one of our neighborhood friends, that she wanted to do the full reset. It’s a lot easier to do this sort of thing if your partner is on board (instead of filling the house with the smell of fresh biscuits every morning, as I often do). So she asked me if I would join in too. At first, I was resistant and bit cranky about the whole idea. But, why not? I’m not a paragon of healthy eating (as aforementioned biscuits attest), so I could do with a reset of my own. I’ve never tried anything like this before, and I have a certain amount of scientific curiosity about whether the program “works,” whatever that might mean, and whether or not I have the strength to stick with it.

First Week

Today is the seventh day, and so far things have been pretty good. The most challenging aspect has been quitting my soda addiction. I typically drink two or three cans of Diet Coke (or, my new favorite, Coke Zero) per day. I don’t do coffee or tea, but I am quite solidly addicted to my soda. It seems silly, but seriously, this is what I was most worried about. I considered starting to drink tea or some other “approved” source of caffeine, but decided that as long as I’m jumping in, I might as well go whole-hog: no caffeine either.

As it turns out, whatever physical addiction I may have had to caffeine was mild. No headaches or anything like that—the stuff I hear about from people who give up a major coffee habit. I have been a bit spacey and lethargic, especially in the morning, but it’s hard to know if this is related to caffeine or a radical realignment of my metabolism (no sugar or grains changes my fuel mix dramatically).

Candy was the treat of choice for our professional development on Thursday and Friday.
Candy was the treat of choice for our professional development on Thursday and Friday.

Sugar cravings have been present, but not as bad as expected. I definitely want chocolate after dinner, but it’s been manageable thus far. I worry that it will be harder once the “newness” of this thing wears off. I imagine the cravings won’t be as strong, but my level of commitment is likely to dwindle by the time day 30 rolls around.

The hardest thing has been the near constant onslaught of temptations outside of the house. At my ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) “dads’ group” with the kids on Monday night, one of the other dads brought approximately one million gourmet doughnuts for our snack. (When you compare the snacks between the dads’ groups and the moms’ groups, it appears that men are willfully committing nutritional suicide.) Then I had two days of professional development at the end of the week. With the advent of Valentine’s day, candy was the theme. Our work tables were festooned with sweets and we actually had activities where we tossed candy at each other to validate especially good ideas. Luckily, I appreciated the comedic value of all of this.

Dreams

Whole30 Timeline
Whole30 Timeline

One of the support resources Sarah and I have used is an article about what to expect as we proceed through the 30 days, The Timeline: A Day-By-Day Guide To Your Whole30. Overall, things have been a bit less extreme for me than described in the article. In particular, I didn’t feel quite as “hungover” or cranky as expected during the first week. Last night, however, one of their predictions came through in spades. During days 8-15, one should expect dreams:

You’re dreaming. Not crazy nightmare or strange surrealist dreams, either. Incredibly normal and realistic dreams – about donuts. Or Twinkies. Or Snickers.

Last night, just a day ahead of schedule, I had the most insanely vivid dream I’ve ever had about a piece of candy. I was teaching a first grade class about why Snickers bars are not a healthy snack. In order to do so, obviously, I had to slowly eat a Snickers. Dream reality allowed me to narrate while eating, and so I calmly explained why each delicious layer of chocolate, caramel, peanuts, and nougat was actually terrible. I woke up with the flavor and texture still vividly imprinted in my mind. This cracked me up, especially considering that I haven’t eaten a Snickers bar in ages. Maybe I had one of the mini-ones around Halloween, but it’s not one of my favorite candies, and I usually stick to fancier dark chocolate anyway. But my subconscious remembers exactly the flavor and texture of the real thing, and somehow it symbolized the deprivation that my body has been feeling this week.

Seven days down. So far so good. We’ll see how the next twenty-three go.

 

Favorite Song

It’s February in Minnesota, and we’ve been having a lot of dance parties to get out our energy. Griffin’s hands-down favorite song is Say Hey by Michael Franti. He calls it the “I Love You Song” and he could listen to it all day long if I let him! He recently made up a dance called The Salt and Pepper, which involves shaking his fists up and down, “like I’m shaking salt and pepper!!” It’s pretty cute, and if it gets his energy out, I’m all for it!

Maggie even has a dance of her own, too:

The One Ring

One_Ring(white)While fooling around with the pieces from our “Lord of the Rings” board game this morning, Griffin puts on the One Ring and asks,

“Daddy, what’s this ring for?”
“That’s the One Ring! When you wear it, you can control the whole world!
“Oh,” says Griffin thoughtfully, removing the ring, “I don’t feel like doing that today.”

Griffin Says

<crash and crying coming from Griffin’s room>
“Were you playing on the rocking chair ottoman again?”
“Yes.”
“You hurt yourself more on that than any other thing in your room!”
“Yeah. It’s a killer.”

Grandpa: So, Griffin, do you think you’d like to come by yourself to Grandma and Grandpa’s house sometime?
Griffin: No, I don’t think so.
Grandpa: Oh? Why not?
Griffin: Well, I need someone to help me cross the street.

Griffin and Andrew were looking at the photo book I put together on Shutterfly, which we received in the mail today:
Andrew: Griffin! Please don’t wrinkle the pages like that! It’s permanent, that wrecks the pictures, and we want to look at this book for the rest of our lives.
Griffin: Ok, well, when we’re dying, then we can just wrinkle it.

Showing Griffin what I’ve knit so far of my sweater, he says, “Well, make sure you take the needles out before you wear it!”

 

The latest news from Sarah and Andrew.