(Written on WWF(a)C Winter Retreat, 1/19/19)
When I was 13, I fell in love with the back of a man's head.
The head was driving a VW Bug somewhere in Beech Grove, Indiana. We were stopped in traffic.
I was sitting in the backseat of my grandparents' sedan, going to the wedding of some unknown cousin.
"Heart of Gold" came on the radio.
All I knew at the moment was that I wanted to jump out of my grandparents' car, run up to the VW, hop in the passenger seat and spend the rest of my life with the head and the rest of the head's body. He might have had a face full of pimples, or really bad teeth, or body odor. But I knew no one who drove a VW Bug could have anything but a pure heart and high intelligence and good morals and an adventurous spirit.
And then traffic cleared. He drove away, never knowing the 13-year-old girl in the car behind him could have been the love of his life.
When I was 17, I regularly fell in love with any high school boy who was cute and kind to me. To fall asleep at night, after my mother confiscated my reading material and turned off my bedside light as she did every night, I'd (fantasize seems far too sexual; it wasn't like that at all) make up the story in my head of how I had some sort of frightening but non-deadly disease that left me in a coma-like state, but in which I could hear all that was said around me from my hospital bed. All the cute boys from my class would gather nightly around my bed and talk of how they admired me and wished they had told me so before I fell into the coma. After depositing lovely gifts on my bedside tables, they would leave my hospital room, one-by-one, until they boy I currently loved most would be remaining, and stay by my side. I never imagined an end to that scene; no matter how many times I re-created it, I usually fell asleep before being awakened by my true love.
I fell in love for good in 1980. Almost 40 years of loving the same person. Pretty good. So many things to say, and not enough words to say them.
And then I fell in love last Friday night with a young, slender folk singer with muted brown skin and a puff ball of hair. She glided onto the stage in my friend's pool house/listening room in her silky yellow floral dress that seemed highly inappropriate for the January weather but yet perfect for a Canadian-born banjo/ukulele/clarinet- playing mother of a 5-year old. She entranced me, and although there were two other musicians on stage (one her husband) with her, I could hardly watch or listen to anyone but her.
Do all banjo players play with their fingers bent in such a provocative way?
Could her soft speaking voice turn in to a full rich soprano any more easily?
Could her laugh - when telling a story of her daughter, niece or Scottish-born grandmother - be any more adorable?
Was I in love with this woman? I asked myself. I'd never been so immediately taken in by someone's beauty, talent and ease.
Or am I in love with what she does? How she lives, travelling across the country (across the world, I learned when I came home and stalked her on Facebook) playing music? Play with such passion and joy? Play so well that people would pay $20 and come sit in a chilly pool house to hear her play?
I think that's maybe what I'm in love with - the life that is so opposite of mine, the life I had once dreamed of - playing music for a living. I know absolutely nothing about her life except for what she shared in the two hours she was on stage. The life, like mine, that is probably pretty every day, full of joys and trials.
I'm in love with the possibility her life holds - maybe a top 100 song on some chart, maybe stardom, maybe sitting around playing music with friends for hours in a comfortable house with a little food, a little liquor, a lot of joy.
And that reminds me to be in love with the possibility my life holds, as well, and how nicely all my possibilities have turned out so far. A little music with friends, a little food, a little liquor and a lot of joy.
Peace.
