Happy Birthday, Mom

A meandering Sunday morning that starts with a sick dog and ends somewhere else entirely.

Tanner was off all day Saturday, back to bouncing off the walls by morning, and the kitchen told the story of what happened in between. So Hawk did what he does for a cleanup job: reached into the stack next to the turntable without looking and played whatever came out.

What came out was Crosby, Stills & Nash. Eight dollars, used, from Mill Valley Music in Marin, where he goes every couple of months with no list and walks out with ten records. Gatefold, lyric sheet, credits, all of it.

Then Suite: Judy Blue Eyes started, and it turned into something else. His mother played that album constantly when he and his brother were small. Her birthday was two days ago. She would have been 78.

He talks about her, about a relationship that was complicated and loving at the same time, and about a line from Gabor Maté that has stuck with him: no two siblings have the same parents.