The Kevin Mahogany concert on Friday was great fun, but not always for the right reasons. The performance was in an incredibly crappy auditorium of a community college. After we got over the sensation that I was attending a high school variety show, we settled in and enjoyed it. The first set was performed by a big band, which had a few good players but was, overall, mediocre. Before they came on stage, my husband leaned over and said, �I wonder if there will be any women.� He�s clearly been living with me too long, because he�s coming around to my mindset. There was indeed a single woman on the stage, in the classic token female position at the piano. The rest of the band was made up of middle-aged white men in ill-fitting suits. The first reed player was awesome � he apparently used to play with the late great Maynard Ferguson. The trombone section sucked. Most of the rest of the band were competent players but couldn�t swing to save their lives. Still, they played some decent tunes and it was better than we were expecting. Plus it gave us time too check out the audience, which was hilarious. There was a little girl in the back row of the balcony sitting with her doll. I�m guessing she was the child of one of the musicians on stage. We were the only people in our row without white hair. Another white-haired woman sitting downstairs in about the seventh row was going ballistic and screaming enthusiastically after every solo. She was always the first to start clapping and the last to stop. We were taking bets as to whether she was going to throw her panties on the stage before the end of the evening.

Mahogany came out after intermission in a huge black suit suitable for a basketball player and a straw hat pulled so low over his forehead that those of us in the balcony never did see his face. But he was funny and personable and man, the guy can sing. He�s got such an amazingly smooth and easy, relaxed voice. He has the most incredible pitch control � his tour-de-force was in a song he wrote where he did an a cappella scatted �cadenza� that went through many insane and disorienting key changes and ended holding a note that, when the band came back in, was spot on pitch. It was brilliant. He sang standards and lesser-know works and things he wrote himself. He sang slow ballads and songs featuring rapid-fire scat. He sang one number where he duetted with various solo instruments, echoing their own idioms without going into a full-fledged Bobbie McFerrin maneuver. His duet with the drummer was particularly fabulous, as the drummer struggled to keep up with Mahogony�s vocal pyrotechnics until he eventually gave up and went back to a simple back beat.

Afterwards, we drove in vain to find a restaurant kitchen in suburbia open after 10 p.m. I miss the city.

Saturday, we let AJ browbeat us into taking him to the Adler Planetarium, which started out seeming like it might be an okay idea, but it ended in a knock-down, drag-out tantrum. Once we forcibly removed AJ from the building and gave him time to calm down. Then the rain began to fall. By the time we made it to the bus shelter halfway to the car, it was coming in torrents with great forks of lightning over the city. AJ was scared and we were both soggy. We waited at the shelter while my husband got the car. When he returned, the aroma of wet wool spreading through the call told me all I needed to know. We drove back home soggy and grumpy. Things improved after AJ went to bed and we celebrated our anniversary by drinking champagne and eating dinner in front of The Third Man.

This morning was beautiful and clear so we drove to a forest preserve and took AJ on what turned out to be a rather long hike. But we saw herons and ducks and sandhill cranes and wild swans and an enormous, emerald green praying mantis clinging to a blade of prairie grass, which we stared at for some time.

AJ has still been a beast, but he�s trying hard. He seems, lately, to be struggling with demons. He knows he�s acting badly, and yet once he starts in, he doesn�t seem to know how to stop. Today, you could see the struggle. At one point this evening he melted down and ran outside to the yard where he calmed himself down and came back in and apologized. It was amazing, the first time I�ve ever seen him ever be able to pull himself back from the brink. My baby�s growing up.

His fits of fury seem to go hand in hand with obsessive periods of intellectual stimulation. He�s been on a word kick, absorbing everything he doesn�t know, asking about it, and then turning around and trying to reuse it. He�s stretching himself, trying out words that he�s uncertain of just to see how it works. This morning we watched Sesame Street, which was brought to us by the letter Q. One of the Q words was quirky. AJ wanted to know what it meant. I told him something funny and unexpected, which in retrospect may not have been the best definition. He told me a story, �One time when I was over at TGND�s her brother showed me a picture from the Virgin Islands where he had a lizard on his nose and his eyes were crossed so he could see it. It made me feel quirky.� And then I explained quirky all over again. Hopefully I did a better job the second time.

But then there are the times where he says things just right. Those are, to me, even funnier. Friday, when we went skating, he called to me from across the ice. �Look, Mommy, I can turn while going at a high rate of speed!� And he could, too.

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