HOW TO BE A 'G' AND RAISE 7 KIDS ON THE ROAD...

When Max and I got married in 1993, we made a deal to stay a family.....to not split up....to not begin to live separate lives. In Sepultura and Sacred Reich, we always said that we lived two parallel lives...both real, but both very different. We both agreed our lives would be one Tribe, music and family as one road. We had seen too many people split up and what happened to the children. It wouldn't be a part of our plan.

From birth, Zyon and Igor both grew up on the road. Zyon didn't like it so much. He loved the music and the backstage, but the people overwhelmed him. He was one of the most famous metal babies of all time, and the fans mobbed him. He was their little dragon..he was the the future. He was at the Chaos Ad recording and every Sepultura tour after, until his Pops left. At the age of 3 he started writing his name and reading and asked to go to school and not tour. Igor, on the other hand, went to school late as he could and walked out the minute he turned 16. He never wanted to leave the road.

Me and Zyon in Israel at the making of the Territory video 

Thirsty on the beach in Tel Aviv

School comes along and most parents get happy but I can't say I was. It was rough finding good nannies and solving childhood issues from the road. But guess what? Don't whine and do it, because you can. You can do anything you can. I argued over the phone with police trying to RICO Zyon because his classmates wrote CRELS FOR PRESIDENT all over the school. I thought he should have run for class president, but whatever... The point is you can still be MOM and work all day in another country. I probably knew more about my kids lives than stay at home parents really know.

With all the kids in school, for some years there were no cell phones or even fax machines. Now with SKYPE and wifi it's much easier to check shizzle out at home. Every holiday or break we would fly everyone to where we were at the time. It was the best feeling to see everyone arrive! It was a routine to fly in and out, go in and out of school and blend it all together. When we went home, Max would go into the music class at the elementary school and I would go into the classroom and talk about different countries and their customs. When the kids were in high school, we even rode in a convertible in the Homecoming Day Parade!!!

Richie playing the Nailbomb club show in Holland at the age of 8

Alex, Richie, and Max at the Chaos AD recording

Many years we did dodge the school system and kept them out on tour longer than we should have and more often than we were allowed. The police would be called and we would get the lowdown drilled to us. but we were truant still, I admit. On the road, the kids went to many museums, castles, concentration camps, slums, boat rides, walked through Ann Frank's alcove and Nelson Mandela's cell at Robben Island. I wanted them to know history. To know poverty. I took them to Mao Hauser concentration camp where my mother was imprisoned. I wanted them to know their roots. I wanted them to make decisions with thought and to learn about the world, and not to hang out in malls, or waste their time in a friends back room, day after idle day. And no, it wasn't easy and it wasn't all glamourous. It was years of no sleep, working through the birthday parties, spending hours on planes, never sitting down to eat a meal, always with the wheels turning in your head. But I wouldn't change a day! My 2 daughters helped us to keep our bond strong. If it weren't for them, we probably would have stumbled more often. The thread we spun twines through us no matter where we are on this planet. From us it threads through each territory, it spreads like lava and connects our Tribe to us. Once you are in the Tribe, Max says you are never out. It is the law...

On a canoe in the Amazon

Roxanne and Zyon in Hawaii.

Now the boys are out of school. No more nannies...well, the dogs need one now, but thats another blog... Igor, our 7th and last domino, was never one for school. Reading his whole life, being a deep thinker and a diversified musician, school was a ball and chain, a giant anchor. One day he said he was never going again. I protested and he disappeared with Max. The principal, who was super cool, answered the phone when I called the school to discuss it. A bit later, I got a call back, from the principal, regarding our family's move to Portugal....apparently what Max told them...


Class was really dismissed....