It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [145]
Writing about financial strategies in the midst of a recession made me reconsider some of the implicit lessons I was teaching at home. I remember telling Mae a bedtime story one night. Usually these consisted of made-up tales about Buckley, the family dog—he was a superhero at night, which explained why he slept all day. But this night, I decided to tell her one of the stories my mother had told me about growing up during the Depression. My mom’s stories haunted every major financial decision I made in adulthood. It dawned on me that maybe it was time for me to teach my girls more of the values I was taught growing up in a large family with working-class parents.
I maintained an idealized Norman Rockwell–like picture in my mind of how our home life should look. Ah, but things seldom happen according to plan when you have kids. I tried to teach my daughters to play guitar many times over the years. Or at least to get them interested in it. It seemed logical. I’m a musician, and my girls would probably take after their old dad, right? Wrong. The reality was that they thought I was a dork, and that all the things I did were somewhat dorky—including playing in a rock band. Okay, I got it: my girls would never start the new Runaways or L7. Fine. I had let that dream fade years ago. My girls would blaze their own trails.
But then my wife and I took the girls to see Taylor Swift. Before anyone chastises me for my taste in music, let me just say that I completely backed my girls’ enthusiasm about Taylor Swift. Raising kids was hard enough—if my kids happened to be into an artist with a sweet and innocent message, well, more power to them. And maybe, just maybe, it showed they weren’t in such a rush to grow up after all.
The day after the Taylor Swift concert, my wife asked me if I could show her a few chords on the acoustic guitar.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
I muttered that I was a crappy teacher, but that I would do my best.
To my surprise, Susan locked right into it and played the chords I showed her for the rest of the day.
The next morning, Grace asked me if I could show her a few chords on the guitar, and if I could teach her an MGMT song.
“Um … sure!”
Grace and Susan ended up playing all that day. The next two days after that, Grace went straight to the guitar when she got home from school. Susan stuck with it, too.
Then, on the day after that, Mae came into the living room—where I have DirecTV’s baseball package so I can watch my Mariners when I am down in L.A.—and asked if she, too, could learn a few chords.
“I want to play with my sister,” she said.
There I was with all three of my girls asking me guitar questions. They were all playing different chords at the same time. Buckley the dog was snoring something fierce. Ken Griffey Jr. was at the plate, and we had a chance to go up by two in the eighth inning.
“Why do you have such an old guitar?” asked Grace.
The guitar in question was a Sears-made Buck Owens American acoustic that I treasure. I started to get flustered, until I suddenly realized that right there, right then, I had everything I’d always wanted. A family that needed me. Kids who were excited about something I could actually help them with. Two dumb dogs (we had added an unruly pug somewhere along the way) who were finally semi-house-trained. And my baseball team on the TV.
If only Norman Rockwell had been there to paint the scene.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
In the summer of 2010, I had to be in L.A. for a few weeks to work on the next Loaded record while my wife and kids were in Seattle for summer vacation. But that was okay. It was cool to be a lone wolf once in a while, to range free and howl at the moon—as long as I was home by 11:30 so I could call my wife before she went to bed. And yes, uh, well, my dogs got lonely