Reeling in the Years

 I'm the spontaneous one, mostly because if I think too long on anything, I would do nothing.

Reading the paper yesterday morning, I discovered one of hubby's favorite bands was playing at a venue in town. I promptly downloaded an app and got tickets for last night's show. I legit didn't realize that the world would be ending AND we'd be driving through Temple's campus right before a basketball game.

Needless to say, it took a lot longer to get to the venue than anticipated. We won't speak of the parking other than to say we bookmarked the place we found for next time. 

(a whole flock of starlings did a fly by my bedroom window just now--so close and so many I could hear wingbeats through the closed window)

We cursed, splashed, and fought the wind (and lost an umbrella) to the venue, masked up, and went in. We were in time for the opening act, same as last year, and I closed my eyes and listened while people continued to stream in (late, because parking, weather, and Temple basketball). We sought food when the lights went up, forfeiting our dinner ahead of the concert to Basketball traffic. Fortunately, there were cheesesteak eggrolls to have with my lager.  They were the best things ever--no sauce like hunger, as the saying goes.

We head back to our seats to find a portly gentleman occupying one of them. He was quite put out that we showed up.  His friends around us put on quite a show, which led us to thinking that one of the gifts of age and COVD is that what once was an interruption or inconvenience is now part of the entertainment. 

Steely Dan took the stage with an uneventful opening number. Kid Charlemagne, my husband's favorite, was up next, just in time for some seat drama right in front of us.  Last time we saw Steely Dan two years ago, a fight broke out a seat or two over during the same number.

He laughed. What else could you do?

Gaucho came out the year I turned 13, and the music was everywhere. I was just 'learning' music at that time, and Gaucho was a big part of my education. 

I say this now because I came by my fandom here honestly; the music was one of my first discretionary tracks of my life. And as such, I can't hear the music without going to other times; randomly, I see my husband in my head when we first started dating (I joke that it wasn't love at first sight--it took about a half dozen times to get there), and the memory caught me by surprise. There were others, but this one sticks with me. And it turns out, as with all things, there was a reason.

I'm sitting here now in my pjs, coffee next to me, listening to birds, seeing blue skies outside, and taking in the whole of my last few weeks, and our last few decades. A insisted on taking younger bowling this am, and in general has been nudging in on what had been 'my' territory--time with the boys.  And only in sitting here now that I realize that this is now 'his' time.  He recognizes things in both boys, consciously or not, that he saw/sees in himself, and he is infinitely better equipped than I am to handle some of the challenges we are facing at the moment. 

As per usual, I'm standing too close to see clearly; A sees the bigger picture.

It's past time to let him lead.  And it's my turn to take notes.