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Come On Baby Light My Fire!

I am cleaning our apartment like a maniac. Picking up, sorting, cleaning, dusting, washing, vacuuming, all the while complaining about the fact that there is too much work and not enough time to finish my summary khooneh takooni, set the Haft-Sin, and do all that I must also do this weekend, in anticipation of the arrival of the New Year on Tuesday. My young adult children are not home. So, I’m talking to myself, or the broom, really. I’m thinking whether Nowrooz is yet another thing that only matters to me in this household? I wonder whether my children’s hearts are also leaping out, thinking about Tuesday? Are they filled with the hope and optimism I tend to project at this time of the year? Do they feel this change of the old year into the new, as I feel, as though I am carrying a gene thousands of years old? Do they even care? I make a mental note to myself to ask them.
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I am driving them to work. Before I have a chance to talk to them about my question, we have another incident interjecting itself on our conversation. Some background first. My kids love The Doors. They are actually obsessed with the Doors. They talk about the Doors, as though it is a musical group that is still around, making new music for them all the time. In fact, as we all know, The Doors don’t exist anymore. Their lead singer, Jim Morrison, died of suspicious causes, and the band disbanded decades ago. As is our family tradition, when each of us wants to share a piece of music he/she loves with the other two, we play it loudly, all sit and listen, and the one promoting the music says some words about the artist, the music, or the lyrics. Each time my children tried to tell me about a song by The Doors, I would say: “I know that music. I used to listen to it all the time when I was a teenager. I owned their original LP’s and listened to them on my gramophone.” Somehow, they are so “newly-obsessed” with The Doors, they don’t believe me. Now, you should also know that I have my very own Doors CD, which among the eclectic collection of music I own, I sometimes play. I had left it in the car CD player last night, when I had been giving myself a solitary audio treat. Now, we fast forward to present. We get in the car, and Come On Baby Light My Fire starts blasting out (yes, I listen to The Doors the only way The Doors should be listened to, on high volume). The two of them look at me in astonishment. They ask where that CD came from. I tell them it’s mine. They smile, shake their heads, and mumble “Coooool!” We listen in companionable silence for a while.
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.....Read the rest of this story in:

http://www.iranian.com/Kaviani/2007/March/NewYear/index.html