Bangs from the 80s

I recently reverted to the hairstyle I had in 1985. Zoë is fascinated by my newly cut bangs. She thinks I brushed them into existence and repeatedly wonders about their permanence. She keeps asking whether they'll still be there the next day. Upon waking this morning, she asked:

"Are your bangs dead?!"

(After looking in the mirror, I decided that was an apt question.)

The CD player in her room broke a little while ago. Actually, the passive voice is all wrong there--Nico actively broke the CD player by opening it, fiddling with it, and climbing on it at every opportunity (we should have put it out of his reach, but there are limited options in that room). Anyway, the point is that Josh has been substituting Zoë's nighttime CDs with her favorite playlist on his iPod: 80s.

Hence, her second question this morning:

"Were you in the 80s?"

"Yes, I was born in the 80s."

"You were born in the 80s?!"

"Yeah, in 1981."

"Did your mom take you there? Where was it?"

"No, it was a time period."

"Oh, they just played the music when you were getting born?"

Considering the fact that my parents' response to The Wedding Singer was "that movie looked kind of old or something," I think it's safe to say that they definitely weren't playing music of the 80s--a decade they somehow skipped--at my birth.


On second thought, maybe the 80s are a place, a place where my bangs have been resurrected (thanks to a shower and blow dry) and the music that was not played at my birth lulls (rocks?) my daughter to sleep at night. More importantly, this house feels a lot like the one I inhabited during that decade--small, cozy, and filled with four people struggling, growing, and ultimately enjoying the space they share together.