Ambushed

            So I was looking up the song “At this Moment” by Billy Vera and the Beaters, because I watched a Biography Channel thing about Mike. J Fox the other morning on the treadmill.  Does anybody remember Family Ties? You remember that girl that Alex loved?  The one he chased all the way to – what was it, New Jersey to the bus station, to tell her she couldn’t marry the other guy?

             Did anybody ever tell me that Michael J Fox actually ended up marrying that same actress years later?  And why DIDN’T somebody tell me, because I’ve worried about that since flipping 1986.  Not only did he marry her, but he’s STILL married to her, and she’s still beautiful, and they have four children, and he says that she makes him feel like she likes him even better now than when he was young and healthy.  So I was thinking about that whole story line, and I remember that song.  THAT SONG.

           And the more I thought about it.  I was sure it was in my iTunes (yeah, I listen to music a lot.  How can I?  I only sit still when I have both iPhoto and Photoshop open.  It’s not like I can add iTunes and not overdrive my RAM), so I went hunting for it.  And yeah, it was there, and I sat there at my desk, waiting for my solitary breakfast to cook, and listened to it.  I had some vague notion of maybe singing it at the Ward Valentine’s Karaoke Fest (which we will miss, I find that I am actually a little sad to say, in favor of a huge family get-together when Gin and Kris are here in February).  So I sang along, testing the range.  Which happens to be perfect for me.

            Only I couldn’t sing the song.  It kept making me cry.

            You know, there’s the episode of Raymond where Debra sends Raymond out so she can have a day to herself, and he sneaks back to see what the heck she’s gonna do with it, and peering through the living room window, finds her sobbing her face off all alone on the couch.  Later, she calls it, “A good cry,” apropos of nothing really.  Just a sort of spiritual clean out.  So yeah.  I guess I needed one.

            Before I could send iTunes back to the dock, the next song started, a very, very simple thing: guitar, and then my grown up, beautiful, dear Cam singing a verse of “Give Said the Little Stream.” 

            I find that the present is a fragile crust with me, of inconsistent construct – part great joy, part absolute bewilderment.  It is a crispy, thin thing and just below it, what-will-be and what-has-been rage and seethe and press hotly upward.  Most of the time, I’m good.  I do what I do, and I’m pretty happy and busy.

            But I sat there too long over Cam’s little song, and before I could stop it,  Celine’s “A New Day Has Come” started up.

            It was all over for me.  The crust broke up into a million pieces and everything below surged up and started  flowing to the sea.  It was like some movie montage—all these pictures flashing through my heart, and all these tears making little wet, warped spots on my heaps of bills and receipts and notes.

            It didn’t last long.  Thank Heaven (literally) that life is nearly all work—annoying enough work that it can keep you balanced when you’re in danger of wallowing.

            But I came away from all of this wanting to say something.  Celine’s song is all my children.

            So wherever you kids are at this moment, and Lord knows you are everywhere—

            Thank you.  Thank you for giving me a chance to be part of your lives.  It’s been an honor and an amazing pleasure. 

            I’m not dying.  I’m just thinking it has to be said, because time is always short in mortality.

            Thank you.  Thank you.  You have been my joy.

            (Really – I’m not dying.  Knocking on wood, maybe.)