Hey, Syd

Sydney loves my candy-apple red i-Pod, the one I use for jogging, the one she's not allowed to play with. Last night she discovered that the device plays music when you hold the ear buds up against the side of your head and stand very, very still. She gazed at me, wide-eyed, listening to Ben Folds' 'Zak and Sara.' After a minute or so she handed the headphones to me and made a sour face.

"I no like this song, Mommy."

"You don't like Ben Folds?" Ack.

"No." The tiny blond head went side to side, emphatically. "I. No. Like. This. Song."

"Wanna listen to another one?"

"Yeah!"

And so I scrolled through my playlists, sort of discouraged by the fact of my flesh-and-blood's questionable taste in music, until I hit on something I thought she could not possibly resist. Perhaps it was a test, I don't know, and god knows to what depths I would have sunk if she had declared this, too, unacceptable, but thankfully she took to it almost immediately. The volume was turned up high enough for me to hear what she was hearing, and as the opening bars of 'Hey Jude' filled her ears I witnessed a moment of pure astonishment, of joy, and when I asked her if she liked this song--say yes, please say yes--she grinned at me and nodded her tiny head and said, emphatically, "YES." And so we listened to the entire song, all seven minutes and seven seconds of it, all through the naa-na-na-na-na-na-naas, to the bitter end, the two of us sprawled on the living room rug, with the iPod.

So there you have it. My child is a Beatles fan. Now I can die happy.