I love spending time at Delia’s parents house. I don’t think they are quite as fond as having me around as a guest, but that doesn’t stop me from savoring the time we spend there. It is like taking a vacation in a very “appropriate” (and low-thrills) Young Adult novel that I would have read as a tween in the 1980s where everyone lives in a cul de sac and gets an allowance (but they have to WORK for it, putting stars on a chart on the ice-making, water-dispensing, un-dented double-doored refrigerator every time they do their chores). Nobody swears, nobody fights, and the closets are full of tidy stacks of towels and sheets and washcloths instead of skeletons. There are oak trees and your mom sends you to school with a most excellent lunch and there are big pantries full of snacks for when you get home from school and everybody has cable access to MTV and HBO and Showtime.
Delia did not really grow up in this kind of picture-perfect Pleasantville, but when we visit her family, I feel transported into that kind of well-insulated white-bread fantasy-land I imagined existed somewhere, just not in my hometown. Because of that, I’ve loved even my first awkward trips back there even though I don’t really fit in.
After Delia’s parents go to bed, she and I stay up late lounging on the super-clean, super-fluffy* carpeted living room floor watching Forensic Files and weird commercials. We eat candy from bowls on the counter and explore the bowels of the pantry full of chips and crackers and snacks and so on. I LOVE IT! Becoming a webwhore and pornographer is one of my dreams come true, but getting to spend time in this super-safe-feeling middle-class American Dreamland is like stepping into another kind of out-of-reach-seeming fantasy I didn’t really even know I craved and would never have put on my vision board. I mean, I never even HAD a vision board (that’s the kind of thing only housewives who live in this strange suburban fantasyland would craft). As much as I revel in the coziness of being there, I’ve never consciously aspired to have this kind of lifestyle. But when I’m there, I’m like … WHY NOT?!? This is FABULOUS!!!
Our first family-visiting trip together back to her home was at Christmas-time in 2002. when Delia’s mom was cooking and more family was due to arrive and Delia’s dad was in and out from being of helpful service to their church and getting the oil changed and Delia and I were just in charge of taking showers in the guest bathroom (they have a GUEST bathroom!!!) and day-lounging in the cozy living room in front of the TV … something very strange came on: a RAY CHARLES TRIBUTE ON ICE!
I don’t remember specifics, but I VIVIDLY recall how surreal and slightly askew the whole corny experience was, this bizarre super-white super-suburban super-American special network-TV performance of figure skaters ICE DANCING to Ray Charles’ music … with Ray Charles performing there while it was happening. It was perfectly strange. I’ve located it on YouTube so now I can see it includes things like skaters exuberantly playing air-saxophone. This was a couple years before the movie “Ray” came out so it was very unexpected, popping up before Jamie Foxx (re)-introduced him to younger generations and washed pop culture anew with his sound and songs.
Music functions like a time machine. It can transport you back into your younger days. Into your parents’ and grandparents’ days. Music can make you feel like you’ve gone back to times that are officially known as “history”. On this first Christmas with Delia’s family in the Midwest, it was like my bookworm-y younger self got to visit this happy YA novel-land or the set of a family-friendly sitcom. Familiar elements from my childhood were there — the music of Ray Charles, waiting for holiday meals to be served, eating little kosher dill pickles from the pre-dinner offerings, and festive figure skaters on the TV in floaty speed-ruffling-hemmed skirts with big proud choreographed smiles. But this time dinner was not spread out on Grandpa’s pool table, there were no dogs* or cats underfoot, nobody was talking about politics, and everything was just so … PLEASANT. Somehow that made the pairing of Ray Charles’ music and ICE DANCING just a little extra weird, like a live dream version of Singing in the Rain with a whole bunch of specially-trained hip-hop dancers in sequined trench coats cheesing it while they ride upside-down umbrellas functioning as Segway-hovercrafts.
Ever since this trip, “Ray Charles on ICE!” represents a lot of the nature and culture of Delia’s family and hometown environment. For me. I am not sure if anyone in her family would even remember that detail of musical television programming, but I bring it up often with Delia to relish the memory of this strong, sweet, silly first impression of suburbia I love escaping to with her.
*Correction: Delia’s parents’ carpet is NOT actually “super-fluffy”; it is, in fact, a berber-like carpet made of mature loops, not shag. I must’ve remembered it as super-fluffy when I wrote this, but upon re-reading this months later I’m like … wait a minute! That carpet is not a high-pile shag at all! I better correct this mistake! But now I’m questioning my memory again; maybe it *was* shag the first time we visited together almost twenty years ago, but they replaced it after the sweet fluffy dog died (another mistake; I made it sound like there were no pets at Delia’s parents’ house, but on at least one visit they had, in fact, inherited one of those big friendly cul-de-sac mop-faced storybook labradoodle type dogs due to another less-idyllic circumstantial detail I chose to leave out of my cozy dream-memories of floating on a bleached-flour bread-loaf cloud of untroubled middle class comfort.