Drugs, Dad Rock, and the death of pain
Trauma gives birth to more trauma, but we are not alone in our pain.
Photo: an early water color by James Lee Sides
Dispatches
I've been thinking a lot lately about Jimmy Eat World. This is a very Dad thing to say. Of all the Dad Things I've ever said, this ranks ahead of my repeated admonitions to the kids to turn off the bathroom light, and slightly behind the time I said, "Look at that tumble cropping." Lindsey had baked an apple pie with a glorious crumble topping, but I was so moved by the site of it I spoonerized the first letter of those words.
The point is: Jimmy Eat World. Jimmy Eat World, for those of you who don't know, is, was, and ever shall be a third-wave emo / pop-punk band that by all objective standards peaked around my sophomore year of high school. This is not as depressing as it sounds.
You may know Jimmy Eat World by their biggest hit, "The Middle," the first single on their third album, Bleed American, released in 2001. I knew them by that single, but as all the mildly thoughtful emo kids of 2001 knew, that song – however awesome, however ubiquitous on alternative rock radio from 2001 to 2002 – was, like, one of the least awesome songs on that album. "The Middle" is nowhere as awesome as "A Praise Chorus," for example, the fourth single from Bleed American, because that song made you feel alive. It empowered you to live beyond all the limiting beliefs of your sad, self-pitying emo lifestyle. Whereas "The Middle" sought to comfort, sought to help you temper your perspective on the ride of life, love, and everything else, "A Praise Chorus" shoved perspective out of the driver seat and promptly did 60 in a 30-mph zone.
Do you know how formative it was, as a 17-year-old homeschooler, to play this song as loud as possible while chatting with girls on MSN Messenger in my parents’ basement? Let me tell you how formative it was. By the time I got to the bridge – the "Crimson and clover" part – I was unstoppable. It was definitely possible to fall in love tonight on MSN Messenger. All I needed was to hear a song that I knew. And "A Praise Chorus" was that song. It was a benediction to go forth into the world, out from my parents’ basement, and feel something. Anything. Everything.
Jimmy Eat World, for those of you who don't know, mean a great deal to me. They've been one of the constant musical forces in my life since said sophomore year of high school. From Bleed American, I discovered their previous albums (which all mildly thoughtful emo kids and/or dads know really cook) and a few b-side cuts thanks to the wonder of the Internet and mostly Limewire. Jimmy Eat World songs made up approximately 25 percent of my Winamp playlists in high school. (Rest in peace, Winamp llama.) Jimmy Eat World songs currently make up a large percentage of my Spotify playlist "Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Winter-Hoops Playlist." I spent entirely too much time parsing through this 30-best-Jimmy-Eat-World-songs article published on Uproxx earlier this year. This is not as depressing as it sounds.
Since roughly 2006, Jimmy Eat World has made a slow but glorious transition to what critics and wanna-be critics like myself call Dad Rock. Punk, as it turns out, is not dead. Punk is Dad. The other day, I asked my kids if they wanted to listen to some Dad Rock. They said yes, because I've brought up my children in the fear of the Lord. I promptly loaded up Jimmy Eat World's latest album, 2019's Surviving, and we rocked out in the living room.
Did you know that Jimmy Eat World once appeared as the musical guest on the now-off-the-air Nickolodeon kids' show Yo Gabba Gabba!? It's true. They played a song called "Beautiful Day with My Best Friend." In the video, they're surfing through the sky on puppies and cats – I don't know either, just go with it – while lead singer Jim Adkins sings (croons?) with an absurd amount of authenticity, "Yeah, it's a beautiful day. / Yeah, it's beautiful day / with my best friend. / With my best friend. / I'm so lucky and happy / to have a friend / a friend like you."
It's the best. It's an immaculately crafted pop-punk jam that will ear-worm its way onto your next Spotify playlist. Yo Gabba Gabba! released two albums' worth of songs performed by their musical guests. The Jimmy Eat World track appears on the Yo Gabba Gabba! Hey! album. I think the "Hey!" is redundant, but this album is loaded. There's a song by Weezer called "All My Friends Are Insects" that has that classic, Weezer-is-trying-too-hard-to-be-cool sound that we've all come to know and loathe. There's a song by Taking Back Sunday called "We All Love Our Pets," which is a real banger, but, to be honest, I could have used more polyphonic harmony. The Jimmy Eat World song is – wait for it – in the middle of these two songs. I don't think there's anything more and truly Dad Rock than having a song on a Yo Gabba Gabba! compilation album sandwiched between Weezer and Taking Back Sunday.
On the surface, this might feel like a long way from, say, "Bleed American," the titular opening track of Bleed American, a propulsive, chugging, scream-along that I'm pretty sure is about doing cocaine. But the distance between "Bleed American" and "Beautiful Day with My Best Friend" is not as far as you might think.
And this is as depressing as it sounds.
I've been thinking a lot lately about Jimmy Eat World because of a conversation Lindsey and I had with our son, James (7), back in January. It was a conversation no 7 year-old should ever have to have about his life story. It was a conversation about his biological parents. It was a conversation about drugs. It was a conversation about the drugs his biological parents used when he was in their care. It was a conversation about how God found him a home. It was a conversation that I knew one day would take place, but not so soon.
But I have to back a little bit farther than January. At a dental appointment for James in early December, the dentist discovered that all of James's 6-year-old molars were growing in without enamel. That is, they were decaying as they were coming in. The dentist asked Lindsey if she had had a stressful pregnancy with James. Lindsey replied that, no, she had not had a stressful pregnancy with James – but that his bio mom had. She told the dentist that drug usage was suspected during portions of James's time in utero.
Ah, said the dentist. That explains it.
As it turns out, 6-year-old molars are formed at a certain gestational time frame, and if the mother experiences stress, illness – or takes drugs! – during that window of development, bad things can happen to those molars. Like, no-enamel-at-all bad. They're exposed, unprotected. It's like if you decided to build a deck in the middle of the Amazon using untreated wood.
Long story short-ish: James's exposed teeth triggered nerve and mouth pain, which triggered TMJ-like symptoms, which triggered tension headaches that lasted every day for more than a month. The dentist applied a sealant to the troublesome teeth, but the pain persisted. Chronic-headaches-every-day-for-a-month persistent. We got second opinions, third opinions. Nothing helped. James was no longer his happy, buoyant, life-loving self. He couldn't focus on his schoolwork. Our days were consumed with trying to answer this riddle. From early December to mid January, Lindsey took James to more than two dozen dental, medical, and physical therapy appointments. Lindsey was exhausted. We all were exhausted and beginning to wonder if things far more serious than tooth pain were the cause of the headaches. Like so many parents, we experienced the vulnerability that comes from not being able to alleviate your child's suffering.
I am going to take a minute to praise my wife, though she deserves far more than a minute. She's a hero. I thank God that he made her the mother of our children. He made her a nurse knowing that our children would need a nurse's perspective to help them heal and flourish. And it was Lindsey, in the dark cave of January's pain, who figured out the riddle to James's headaches.
One night in early January, Linsey noticed that James's shoulders were tense and hunched up. He was tight as a wire. With advice from some friends and Google, she concocted a special massage oil and gave James an intensive, 45-minute massage. When he sat up, it was the first time in a month that he had felt relief from his pain. Lindsey would repeat this same massage one to two times a day for about a week before we got him a series of massage appointments. All that pain begat more pain, and James was holding it all in his shoulders and neck.
The night of the massage breakthrough, the three of us stayed up until midnight talking. I don't remember the exact sequence of events – he was delirious with relief, we were exhausted with relief. Lindsey and I were talking about friends from church who had just taken in a foster placement, and James asked us if that's what we had done for him. We said that it was. He smiled. I mean, he really smiled. In the history of smiles, this smile easily cracks the top 10.
The conversation that followed was one that I didn't think we'd have until James was older. He started asking questions about his bio parents – why they weren't able to care for him, where they were now, how they're doing, if he would ever see them again. We talked a lot about drugs, as James had heard Lindsey and I talk with the medical providers and amongst ourselves about drugs and his bio mom and their connection to his teeth pain. We didn't specify which drugs his bio mom had been using, but, in the most age-appropriate way we could find at 11:30 p.m., we talked about the effects of addiction. (At one point, James paused then said, "The only thing I can say is you shouldn't take dugs when you're having a baby.") We told him that his bio parents had not been loved well when they were young. That they came from hard places. We told him that his bio mom and dad loved him very much, that they did the best they could. His heart was so tender toward them, even as his awareness of their dysfunction and brokenness grew with each passing sentence.
As we talked about drugs and trauma, the Jimmy Eat World song "Drugs Or Me" slowly emerged in my consciousness. Like a recognition of something that you've looked at your whole life but never understood.
"Drugs Or Me" is off Jimmy Eat World's 2003 album Futures. It's a haunting, piano-led ballad. It's about drugs. It's about seeing someone you love become inseparable from the thing that's destroying them. It's about loving someone even though they can't love you back. I've listened to this song hundreds of times over the previous 18 years. But I never got it. I never knew anyone addicted to drugs. This song was a view into a life I had never experienced.
But this song was all I could think of that night. The opening bars of that cold, brittle, piano soundtracked the awful discoveries we helped guide our son through that night. The disappointment in the chorus – "You're sorry, you swear it, you're done / But I can't tell you from the drugs" – further compounding the heartbreak in the song's final lines: "Keep my heart / somewhere drugs don't go... / Always keep me close."
I'd like to believe that that's true for James's bio parents, especially his mom. That somewhere in her heart she is still keeping him close. But I honestly don't know.
Trauma gives birth to more trauma. But the gestational period can last years. Over the last year or two, I had started to think that we were going to avoid these birth pains with James. That we had somehow outran the trauma from his early years. That the hard places of his beginning would not leave an imprint on his future. I just wanted a "normal," un-traumatized child. That's all. I didn't think that that was too much to ask after a decade of infertility. After enduring two trauma-filled years to adopt him.
The pain James experienced, the condition of his teeth, the realization that to one degree or another the trauma stored in the body will work its way out... I found myself resenting the story God's been writing for our family. I found myself feeling tired of being the parent of kids from hard places.
Maybe that's how Jonah felt when God called him to go to Nineveh. It's not so much self-pity as it is incredulity. A mistake has been made. There's an error in the script and the show cannot go on until it is resolved. Fix it. Or I'm on the next ship to Not Here.
If you let yourself, I bet you can empathize with Jonah more than you might think. The prideful rejection of a call. The self-righteous indignation that they could be loved by God. The revival in his heart (and in Nineveh) after divine intervention. The relapse into pouty self-loathing. The refusal to let God be God and clay be clay. Sounds a bit emo to me. Sounds like someone I know.
But in his infinite mercy, God has picked us up and carried us – traumatic pasts and emotional instability and everything else. It's what he does. It's what resurrection is about. James's teeth pain is behind us, though more dental treatment will be needed in the next year or so. His headaches are gone and he is back to his life-loving ways. And even though his past will likely creep up again in the future, I know that it's part of the story, and we are not alone in the story. That even in the bellies of our proverbial whales, in the middle of our traumas, that everything will be alright. Not because saying so makes it so or makes us feel good, but because Jesus walked out of a tomb, giving birth to a hope that will outlive our pain.
Cultural Appreciation Class
We introduced our kids to The Sound of Music a couple weeks ago, and our house has been alive with the sound of The Sound of Music ever since. Some highlights:
Misheard lyrics include, "How do you hold a clown and pin it down?" (Cloud, clown – close enough.)
We've had to tell our kids not to say such phrases as "You're a Nazi!" or "Heil Hitler!" in public
Rolfe is affectionately known as Ralph.
James asked Lindsey, "Is the Fragrant Mother really Maria's mom?" It's an excellent question, and "Fragrant" is a decided upgrade over "Reverend."
Poet's Corner
Fun fact: Easter is more than a day; it's a season that lasts 50 days. May this reflection by Mary Karr (not to be confused with Mary Oliver) help you feel the possibilities of Jesus's risen life.
"Descending Theology: The Resurrection"
by Mary Karr
From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Nowit’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.
Extra Credit
The titular and opening track of Jimmy Eat World's Surviving is actually a poignant reflection on what unresolved trauma can do to one's psyche. But its refrain is good news for anyone looking for healing and relief: "You're not alone in pain / never alone in pain."