My British Rock Band Summer

When I hear the opening lines to “Hello,” the first track off Oasis’s “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?,” I think of KFC and mah-jongg.  Of a rotary phone and a floral sleep sofa.  Of a homey apartment smell I can still conjure up in my brain. 

Allow me to tell a tale of the summer of 1996, with the assistance of Oasis, a favorite band from my youth.[1] I know – the Gallagher brothers’ endless fighting was annoying. And yes, one of the band members may have made some unsavory remarks about Americans. But I am about the music, and in the mid-1990s, this band got me through a transition I’d been dreading.

“You gotta roll with it”

I hated the thought of moving as a kid.  I wanted to stay in my childhood home forever.  But when we put our house on the market and I had to deal with strangers walking through my room, opening closets, and asking endless questions, I quickly accepted it was time to move on.  Not a fan of personal space invasion. (Ironic when you hear what’s about to go down!)

Plus, I was excited about our new house.  After seeing several listings, we knew the new place was right for us almost immediately. So, late in the summer of 1996, we moved our furniture to our modest new home.  But we didn’t move ourselves.  The house needed a little work, so we convinced my grandma to let us crash at her place in the interim.  It was only supposed to be for a couple of weeks.  We all know how that goes.   

“She’s in a family full of eccentrics”

For over two months, my mom, aunt, and I, along with our two-year-old wire-haired fox terrier, Mitzi, occupied my grandma’s one-bedroom apartment.  It was a total invasion.  We crammed her fridge and cabinets with our snacks.  We seized her ironing board.  We spread our toiletries all over her bathroom. And this is to say nothing of the space we took up with our personalities! Three women and a moody teenager living in two rooms make for exciting interpersonal dynamics.  

The sleeping arrangements were particularly fun:  My aunt slept on a twin mattress on the floor, and Mitzi insisted on squeezing herself onto it too.  Meanwhile, my mom and I slept on a pull-out sofa in the living room, which was almost as large as a full-size mattress but one-third as thick.  Every night we’d remove the couch cushions, unfold the heavy bedframe, and make up the bed with sheets. 

“Need a little time to wake up, wake up”

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t sleep on that thing.  I really dislike people in my space. In fact, I hate it.  So even though it was my mom and everything, I struggled with sharing a less-than-full-sized mattress.[2]  On top of my displeasure at the lack of space, other circumstances made sleep nearly impossible.  First, it was always hot in the apartment.  Second, my side of the mattress had springs that poked my back all night, so there were very few positions in which I could get and stay comfortable.  Third, my mom woke up constantly, complaining of itchy skin and desperate to quench what appeared to be an absolutely never-ending thirst – signs, we’d come to learn only a few months later, of the onset of diabetes.[3]   

With slumber outside my reach, I turned to music.  Every night I listened to Oasis’s “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” on my Walkman.  It was one of only a handful of CDs I’d recorded onto a 90-minute Maxwell cassette before the move.[4]  And that ritual got me through the restless nights.     

While getting good sleep was rare for any of us during those months, it was sharing the space during the day that proved most challenging.  It wasn’t surprising when my grandma quickly grew frustrated from our use of her home and belongings. 

My grandma liked things just so, and there was no stopping her from having it that way.  She folded our hanging laundry and put it away – even if it wasn’t yet dry.  She allowed us to drink from the water pitcher she kept in the fridge, but if we failed to refill it immediately, we were in trouble. (The biggest offender was my mom, who was so thirsty that she regularly emptied the pitcher in one sitting.)  My grandma also felt the need to clean up dinner . . . while dinner was ongoing.  She cleared dishes while we were still eating off them.  On take-out nights, while we were chowing down on our yummy KFC bucket dinner, she’d swoop in, collect utensils and food cartons, and rush to the trash chute in the hall. 

The only one who got a pass was Mitzi.  Now, she was just as intrusive as the rest of us: she curled up on my grandma’s – and only my grandma’s – reading chair.  She leapt into my grandma’s bed and woke her up with dog kisses and a thumping tail.  She barged in on my grandma in the bathtub.  But, for some reason, her mischievous manner warmed my grandma’s heart.  By the second week, my grandma was pulling dining room chairs over to the window so Mitzi could jump up and look out.  Not long after that, we’d come home to find the two of them curled up on my grandma’s reading chair.  Of her four guests, Mitzi may have been the only one my grandma would have willingly kept on as a roommate. Watching their fast friendship blossom made up for having to endure my grandma’s annoyance with the rest of us.        

“Nobody ever seems to remember

Life is a game we play”

It wasn’t all cramped up grumpies at my grandma’s.  We watched TV, cooked, and gossiped about the neighbors.  But my favorite activity, by far, was the late-night game of mah-jongg.[5]  After dinner, we’d pull out the mah-jongg set.  We’d play and talk and laugh into the night.  Mitzi would eventually wander off into the bedroom, having accepted that (a) the meal was over, (b) the snacks were over (although there’d been plenty of those), and (c) we would probably be up past her bedtime.  One night her slinking away rubbed off on my grandma, who, upon glancing at the clock and realizing it was midnight, jumped up and ran into her bedroom.  I’d never seen her move that fast! I don’t even think she heard my mom call out, “Are you afraid you’re going to turn into a pumpkin?” The memory of that night still makes me smile.

“What am I gonna do while I’m looking at you?

You’re standing ignoring me”

Once school was in session, I tried to maximize my time out of the apartment to give myself and my family members much needed space.  My hang-out of choice was the stone court outside the main entrance to my High School.  Lined with benches, surrounded by a manicured lawn, and just steps from both the snack stand and parking lot, it was a popular locale when class let out.  It was also an upper middle class skate park. 

I liked the skater crew.  They were entertaining.  One by one, they’d pop up and start doing tricks on the steps, along the benches, and off the railings.  They’d rotate and flip and coast.  They’d pause for a quick game of hacky sack. And these guys were down to earth.  They’d take breaks from their stunts to plop down next to me and keep me company during those afterschool hours.

The skaters were relatively uncorrupted by high school cliques and classicism.  They talked to who they wanted to talk to and did what they wanted to do.  Of course, there was one elusive guy whose attention all of the girls sought, and he eventually managed to intrigue me as well.  But aside from a few “What’s goin’ on’s” muttered my way, he regularly forgot I existed, and so I regularly moved on, as one does in High School.       

“Don’t you know you might find

A better place to play”

So how did this adventure conclude?  Well, eventually, we made it into the new house.  I was on the verge of joyful tears as I climbed into my very own twin bed that first night, in my very own bedroom.  Talk about luxury! 

We proceeded to settle in just fine.  We all loved the cozy abode.  Mitzi stayed with us for another dozen years, and, like the other dogs we have welcomed since, she got her fill of the airy, screened-in porch, snoozing away on summer afternoons while the breeze ruffled her tangled belly fur.  Once my grandma had time to decompress from the home invasion, she’d come over for dinners and afternoons on the porch.  With many years of care and pruning, the property bloomed into a miniature park, a perfect locale for my wedding twenty years later.  It is a special place that became ours at a special time, and the fam-jam lead-up to the move-in was perhaps the most memorable and meaningful experience of all.

“And it’s never going to be the same

‘Cause the years are falling by like the rain

It’s never going to be the same

‘Til the life I knew comes to my house and says

Hello”

Here comes the bittersweet part – and it’s not that Noel and Liam never quite figured out how to get along.[6]  I know we can’t go back in time or recapture the past. (At least, not yet, but who knows? I believe in technology.)  And even when we revisit places that we loved the first time around, we find that our mind warped our memories, and the second time is “just not the same.” 

Nevertheless, despite the “inconveniences,” I’d give a heck of a whole lot to be back in that one-bedroom apartment for just five minutes, smelling leftover take-out, nuzzling my Mitzi, and hearing my grandma laugh at my aunt’s jokes while my mom reached for the nearest two-liter soda.[7]    

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[1] All lyrics are from Oasis’s second studio album, “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”

[2] I’m sure it was just as unpleasant, if not more so, for my mom to have to share a bed with a whiny, metal-mouthed teenager.

[3] She once stopped on her way home to buy a two-liter bottle of Coca Cola at CVS and chugged it within minutes.     

[4] Meanwhile, miles and time zones away, Oasis was putting on a two-day concert at Knebworth, a festival site in the UK.  Even if you’re not an Oasis fan, it’s worth checking out the recent documentary about this famous event.  It’s like watching a concert from start to finish, and it’s a reminder of the concert-going experience before smartphones robbed us of the ability to be present.

[5] Mah-jongg is a Chinese game of chance and skill.  You play it with tiles that resemble small bricks, marked with various Chinese characters and symbols.  The goal is to get a winning hand, like you would with a game of cards. 

[6] The Gallagher brothers’ relationship is almost entirely bitter.  But I’m not giving up on an Oasis reunion.  I’m hoping they’ll get too old to care about their feud. 

[7] This one is for the GIRLS.