Dear Taylor Swift… A Thank You.

 

Dear Taylor,

I need to thank you.  Not simply for the gift of your music.  But for the magic wrapped in the moments you gave me on the night of your concert here in St. Louis.  Sure, you are talented….. I never doubted that.  But what I didn’t know was how I would feel as I watched you through the eyes of my sweet girl. I cried at her awe, at the beauty of watching her wide brown eyes, her open-mouth, her sweet up-turned freckled nose.  I knew these were seconds I wouldn’t get back.

She just turned seven.  This was her first concert.  Thank you for knowing and understanding the faith I and hundreds of other moms put in you that night.  Your language was pure.  You walked the line between sassy and mature – never veering into territory that would cause me to cover my girl’s ears.  Thank you for being the kind of role model I can point to with pride…  a talented young woman with spunk and sass….  who’s heart is clearly as beautiful as her face.  Your mom must be so intensely proud of you. Heck, I was proud of you…. and you know how close we are.

 

You know how we experienced you?  Holding hands… drinking lemonade….. singing along to your songs.  She giggled.  She marveled at the stage and the size of the trucks used to move you and your crew from one city to the next..  She asked 724 questions.

She trusted me.

She trusted me to know the songs, to lift her when she needed to be lifted, to hold her as she fell asleep in my lap as you sang your final song.

It was magic.

Thank you.  My Taylor Swift concert experience *might* have been better than hers.

Love,

A Grateful Mom.

 

A special thank you to our friend Karla Shaffer and her daughter, Avery (a good friend from school) for allowing me to use the featured picture of Taylor – they had fantastic seats and their pictures of the night were amazing!


 

Kanye West’s Outburst on the VMAs Proves he is a Terrible Role Model

I don’t often jump into the fray of pop culture, but I have to confess, I think Kanye West is classless.  His social skills are suspect and I am disturbed his celebrity means there are kids who look up to him.  Or maybe they did.

If you didn’t see his latest antics, you could initially watch the replay on Youtube, but the video has been pulled, I imagine as a result of copyright. At MTV’s Video Music Awards last night, Kanye interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to basically say Beyonce should have won.

Reasons Kanye West should not be a role model:

1) He is a sore loser

2) He is a bully and thinks belittling others is appropriate

3) He clearly doesn’t know when to keep his thoughts to himself

4)He is the disastrous combination of a narcissist and an egomaniac

5) He is wasting an amazing opportunity to focus his talents for good

This is a performer who has a following – there are people who love his music – and he is taking that genuine opportunity to use his celebrity for good and stomping on it.

I’m all for free speech – but there is a LINE.  How dare you interrupt anyone when they are accepting an award – let alone a 19 year old.  From what I have seen, Taylor is very close to her mom.  If I was Taylor’s mom, it would have taken all the restraint I possessed to not jump on that stage and yank him down. Forcibly.

That said, clearly Beyonce is the Anti-Kanye.  When she won likely the most coveted award of the night, she remembered her feelings as a teenager at the VMAs and brought Taylor out to have ‘her moment’.

Fortunately, there are Beyonces in the world to overshadow the Kanyes.