It all started innocently enough. I wanted to buy some new music from ITunes so I googled “best albums of 2007.” Looked through Rolling Stone’s list and was totally uninspired. Guess I should say up front that I’m not the hippest music critic around – can’t do the pop princess thing or the electronic thing or the hip hop thing, or the R&B thing and most definitely not the country big hats, hair, and belt buckle thing, but I guess Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw aren’t on anyone else’s list of hip happenings either.

So I’m surfing around trying to remember the album reviews I read over the last year that made me want to run out and buy something. I think the fact that I read album reviews puts my name on the cool-grandmother list with an arrow pointing up but that’s just my opinion.

I suddenly remember Sheryl Crow’s album Detours and download that and while I’m listening to her I stumble onto Neil Diamond’s new album. Great reviews. Great sound. I’m ready to click the “buy album” button when I remember how much I loved Hot August Night and how sad I am that I lost the album years ago when I think, “duh I’m in ITunes, I bet they just might have it.” Before I can say hold on I’ve shelled out $20 for a piece of my youth and rock & roll history.

Night falls and I curl up in bed with my IPod and Neil’s gravel voice. I’m thinking I’ll go to sleep listening to all that great music (scroll down to Peter Coyote and you’ll see I’m a sucker for curling up with famous men) but of course I’m totally wide awake and catapulted back to my 1970s shag-carpeted, plaid-couched, wood-paneled living room dancing to Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show. Pack up the babies, grab the old ladies, everyone knows, everyone goes, Brother Love shows.

That’s when it stopped being about Neil Diamond and started being about me as a young mother and wife counting on Hot August Night to get me through cleaning that blasted living room one more time while my babies tried to kill each other in the front yard.

A cul-de-sac in the suburbs was a wonderful thing for moms in the 70s. None of the women on Smokerise Court worked – well, you know work that we got paid for – and I could crank up the stereo so loud I couldn’t hear my kids screaming with the assurance that if they were really dying Barb Ryan or Wanda O’Leary would walk through the front door and turn the knob down.

Barb and I had a deal that if one of us died the other would run in and clean the house before the in-laws came over with deviled eggs and green bean casseroles. God help us both, it seemed so important then. Now I figure that if my house is clean I’ve missed out on some fun somewhere.

So here I am 30 something years later and I have to face the fact that Neil is never dropping in to claim me as the more-woman-than-he-can-handle love of his life or love of his night, my boobs are never going to be perky again, and my babies are all grown up so what the hell difference does a little dust make? I’m heading to the lake with a bottle of wine for a never-come-again sunset. If I die coming home after drinking the whole bottle there’s no need to come over and dust or make the bed. Just play Hot August Night at the memorial and pass the jug.