Birth of the Uncool

You are at your most uncool now age spotted, raggedy, not giving a shit, saucy, insouciant, real, crackly and juicy at once. --from "Crackly and juicy" Birth of the Cool, a compilation album by jazz great Miles Davis, was released in 1957, the year before I was born. That album defined "cool jazz" elegant, distant, hip, and stylish. Davis and his eight comusicians made it all look so easy. From the time I was very young, I was trying to be as cool as Davis's jazz: aloof, intellectual, desired, mysterious, alluring, and perfect. Only in my fifties did I understand that I had to relinquish this striving and rebirth the uncool parts of me--those bits that are sentimental, awkward, and vulnerable. This book is an eclectic and uncoolly accessible collection of musings on motherhood, childhood, recovery, faith, and love.