What Fall Out Boy Taught Me About Motherhood

Before I had kids, I went to concerts. A lot of concerts. The New Pornographers, Peaches, Rilo Kiley, Wilco. Never Fall Out Boy, though. Don’t get me wrong: I liked Fall Out Boy. But I filed them under the “guilty pleasure” category.

Motherhood changed me in a whole lot of ways, but one of the most significant is that I stopped having “guilty pleasures.” I stopped concealing things I loved because I cared what other people thought—partially because I stopped having time to care and partially because I feel a huge responsibility to raise kids who feel free to love what they love and who aren’t afraid to express that love. And they need to see that, first and foremost, embodied in their mom.

Since having kids, I’ve been to six Fall Out Boy concerts, and they’ve come to define my journey through motherhood.

Show #1

When: May 2013
Where: 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
Key stats: My daughter is 7 months old

My daughter was born in October 2012. My husband and I used to joke that she was a video game—but instead of getting started on an easy level like Beginner, we were handed a baby who was always set to either Hard, Advanced or Expert. She had colic, which means she cried inconsolably for hours every day. I spent the next few months living in a body I didn’t recognize while trying to soothe this new human being, one I’d made, one who seemed miserable to have been born.

November 22, 2012: I had a 1-month-old. Things weren’t great.

Motherhood does things to you. You instantly have more responsibility and less power than you’ve ever had before, and I was caving under the weight of it. I used to take one drive every day, alone. I’d listen to “Runaway” by Kanye West and cry—and then I’d go home and be the best mom I could be. That’s what parents do: We stabilize. We file away your own big, bad emotions into a secret compartment for the sake of our families, and we fight to stay happy in the process. And then, in April 2013, Fall Out Boy ended their hiatus and released “Save Rock and Roll.”

The album became the soundtrack to my days; it inspired me to acquire a pair of concert tickets and a babysitter.

When my daughter was 6 months old, there was a weeklong period where she cried for at least an hour every night, starting at 3 a.m.; I’d put on a pair of headphones, put that song on repeat and attack the grout in our bathrooms with a toothbrush.

I was exhausted. The grout had never been cleaner. The show was amazing.

Show # 2

When: September 2013
Where: Patriot Center, Fairfax, Virginia
Key stats: My daughter is 11 months old

As the year passed and I juggled family and work, I always felt like I had three roles to play: Mom, wife and employee. And some days (fine, a lot of days), it felt like I was failing at all of them. There is a line in “I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You)” that goes:

The best way to make it through
With hearts and wrists intact
Is to realize two out of three ain’t bad

This is not how Fall Out Boy meant this lyric, but I adopted it as my metric for success in motherhood. On any given day, I tried to do well at two of my three roles. I gave myself permission to fail at one thing. And I forgave myself. I accepted that I was doing my best. Some days, 95% of a meal I made would end up on the floor, and I’d want to cry and scream, “Why did I bother?!” But instead, I gave myself a passing grade because I tried.

When word came that there would be a follow-up “Save Rock and Roll” arena tour, I was immediately in. I bought great seats. The concert—which was on a Tuesday night—rolled around, and I screamed in the crowd. I danced. I let go of all the times it felt like I’d failed as a mom, as a wife, as an employee. I let go of all the times I didn’t feel like I was enough.

And I left clean.

Show #3

When: July 2014
Where: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland
Key stats: My daughter is 18 months old

The further my husband and I got away from the first bad months with my daughter, the harder they became to remember. And the further we got away from them, the more we began to gaslight ourselves. Had it really been that hard? Were we really just freaked-out first-time parents? We couldn’t be sure, but we were happy.

We moved. We left our tiny condo on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and decamped to the suburbs. I’d made a career change after having my daughter—from content to product management—and I was finally finding my way. At the same time, Fall Out Boy was being accused of changing their sound, from punk to pop.

I was making frequent trips west to Los Angeles for meetings. In early July, on a flight from D.C. to Los Angeles that left in the evening and flew into the sunset for what felt like the longest, most endless evening ever, I drank a glass of wine and wrote my husband an email that said:

“Going away and facing going away—and the thought of you and our daughter living a life without me—made me realize how much and how full I am with love for you both. Like, the thought of little moments you’ll have when I am gone the next few days makes me physically ache—and it makes me see how even though my heart is pretty full, it’s also possible for it to grow and grow and grow with the amount that you love someone, or someones. Because, man, do I love you two.”

I had achieved equilibrium.

Monumentour was the final leg of the “Save Rock and Roll” era. I was so pumped for this show. So pumped. But when the day of arrived, I was so tired. My husband and I stopped at a Starbucks on our way to the show for an iced coffee, black. And then we stopped for another. It didn’t work. I was exhausted. Weeks of traveling and work and taking my daughter to the pool had clearly caught up with me. I conserved my energy for Fall Out Boy, and when they played, I danced. It was what I needed, but I knew that it was likely to be the final leg of the touring cycle for the album, and I was bummed.

Two things happened quickly afterward that lessened my disappointment: I had a thought that led me to a CVS, which led me to a bathroom stall at work, which led to a plus sign. I was tired at Monumentour because I was pregnant.

Then, in September 2014, Fall Out Boy released “Centuries,” so I blocked off time on my work calendar to hear the song premiere. Another album was coming.

Maybe the “Save Rock and Roll” trilogy was over. But the “American Beauty/American Psycho” trilogy was just beginning.

Show #5

When: June 2015
Where: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland
Key stats: My daughter is 2 ½, my son is 3 months old

My son was born in March, and I spent all of April, May and June on maternity leave. If my daughter was a video game set to Expert level of difficulty, my son was set to Beginner. If he had been our first baby, I probably would’ve had 18 babies. He hardly ever cried. He napped well. Sure, he had his moments. But for the most part, he was easily placated and hard to upset. He was my take-along baby; we went for long walks, long lunches, a million errands. If my daughter had to be the captain, the star, the center of attention, my son was just happy to have made the team.

This show, part of the “Boyz of Zummer” tour, seemed like the best idea at the time. It was our first time leaving both kids with a sitter, the concert was a Saturday and my maternity leave ended the following Monday. What a great grand finale the concert would be! I could go back to work happy and satisfied and feeling complete.

It didn’t work out that way, though.

My husband and I were so excited to be there that one of us was terribly over served. (Hint: It was the one of us who had spent the better part of the previous year abstaining from alcohol.) I remember three things about the actual show:

1. We had amazing seats in the third row behind the pit.

2. I drunk danced and fell into the teenage girl sitting next to be at least seven times. (If you were that girl, I am sorry. I’m usually not an idiot.)

3. When they sang “Uma Thurman,” this lyric, “I slept in last night’s clothes and tomorrow’s dreams”—which I’d hummed to myself probably 4,000 times during my maternity leave because nothing summed up my life at the time more—I burst into tears. I stood in Merriweather Post Pavilion bawling like a baby because it hit me: My maternity leave was over. My time home with my baby boy was gone. The concert was over.

Show #5

When: July 2015
Where: Giant Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania
Key Stats: My daughter is still 2 ½, my son is still 3 months old

My phone rang early on the Sunday morning after the concert at Merriweather; it was my dad calling to see how it had gone. I told him everything. There were tears.

“I had a feeling this might happen,” he said. “You know, there’s another show at Hershey, on Friday night. How about if Mom and I come down for the weekend and you guys can go to that one, too?”

While I may not have realized the flaw in my plan, my dad saw it coming.

I took a deep breath, bought tickets, handed my son over to the teachers at daycare and sat at my desk at work in near-tears. But at least I had something to look forward to, to keep me going through that difficult week. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t call in sick to spend the day in bed holding onto my sadness. I spent that week gathering up my strength and fighting because that is what I do—that is my motherhood. I stabilize, I focus, I store all those big emotions in a compartment in my heart and I let them out at Fall Out Boy shows.

We drove to Hershey that Friday night, we watched Wiz Khalifa’s set, we drank zero drinks and I got a second chance. I let go of how sad it felt to be back at work. I let go of how sad it felt to be constantly dividing my attention between two kids. I let go of the feeling that I’d ignored during my maternity leave. I chose to feel happy.

Show #6

When: March 2016
Where: John Paul Jones Arena, Charlottesville, Virginia
Key stats: My daughter is 3, my son is 11 months old

I spent the better part of October 2015 sick. If I ate, I got sick—instantly and violently. My coworkers got used to my dashing out of meetings to vomit. After a while, I stopped eating. I subsisted for days on half a banana or a slice of toast. I lost 10 pounds in two weeks. Every test came back inconclusive, every treatment temporary. Every GI doctor I contacted couldn’t see me for six weeks or eight weeks, until finally I begged my way into an appointment—at which they immediately scheduled a colonoscopy/endoscopy. The night before the procedures, I quietly drew up a living will. As a nurse hooked me up to an IV, I listened to “Novocaine” on my headphones (“One day the valley’s gonna swallow me whole”). I imagined a future where I didn’t get to walk my daughter to her first day of kindergarten or see my son take his first steps.

The diagnosis: Inconclusive. A really bad virus, the doctor said. My husband picked me up from the procedure and put me to bed. He woke me up with my laptop in-hand at 3:50 p.m. because meet-and-greet passes for Wintour went on sale at 4 p.m., and he wanted me to get one. (We already had great seats for the concert itself.) I was still woozy from the anesthesia, but my husband sat with me, helped me enter the correct credit card information, helped me create an account on one site and then another—and I got a pass.

On the morning of the show, my son woke up sick. He clearly had an ear infection; my parents took him to the pediatrician, and while I considered not going to the show, my husband and I ultimately drove the two hours to Charlottesville, and I got in line for my meet and greet.

I knew what I wanted to say: Thank you. I assumed I might not have the chill to explain that their songs were where I stored my feelings, or that their shows were hugely cathartic for me, or that I looked at their songs as maps to guide my emotions—and that the map usually helped me arrive at Destination: Happy.

In the moment, standing in front of the band, I just ended up saying, “Thank you for making music that makes me happy. Can we all just stand here and look happy in this photo?” And then I ran away and met up with Scott, and we went to our seats.

Our seats, thanks to the triangular shape of the stage, turned out to be in the front row. I took one look at the stage, and I realized this was the finale.

There wouldn’t be another show after this for me, not for a while anyway, because how could it get better than this? Pete Wentz nearly confirmed as much during the show, mentioning that this would be the last time they toured for a while. Pete and I happened to make eye contact during “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes.” I was wiping a tear from my eye, and he nodded the slightest nod. I nodded back, and it felt like we understood each other, like I was letting him know that I am going to be O.K.

That was the last catharsis I’ll have for awhile. And I’ll be O.K. I have everything I need in the meantime to find my way to Happy.

Meredith Rodkey is a writer, product manager and mom based in Virginia.