jumpingfish

We got a new couch. It’s kind of retro: buttons on the back, tweedy fabric. Kind of makes you think you ought to be holding a martini and listening to avant garde jazz.

The futon (which served us well) has been relegated to another room.

And now when we stand in the living room and look at the space we’ve created, you no longer think of … slumber parties … when you walk in our front door.

I stand in the hall with a cool breeze coming thru the screen. There’s a yellow puddle of light in the far corner of the otherwise dark living room, where the fair and industrious Trudy is sitting on the new couch reading a book.

She looks up at me as I start to say something.

“I think that we should…”

She stares, waiting for me to finish.

“Yes?”

“I think that we should get one of those … plastic covers … that, you know … slips over …”

“You can’t even say it, can you? You can’t say it with a straight face.”

“No. I can’t.”

We got a new couch. And it feels like we’re such grown ups. Frightening for a couple well into middle age.

Yesterday late afternoon. The sky was blue and the sun was shining.

It struck me that this was likely my last chance for a warm, sunning evening run, since the time change was coming, and it’ll be getting darker soon.

Jog to the track. Not quite a jog, because there was too much side-to-side movement going on. More like trudging than anything else. A few laps around with some walking in between, because that’s how far things have come: that a few laps around would be a work out. And then back home.

And today the times have indeed changed. I sit here with dark night outside my window with hours to go before I sleep. Hours to go before I sleep.

I missed the moon passing in front of Jupiter about a week or so ago.

I had been watching for weeks as the new moon’s crescent waxed, and it approached brightly shining Jupiter along the ecliptic from the west. I had been watching night by night as the distance narrowed. And I was looking forward to the day.

So then I’m in Houston, and I look up at the sky one night walking back from my brother in law’s house, and I see the moon a day or two on the other side of Jupiter.

D’oh! I wouldn’t have made it as an astronomer.

1. Breakfast

“Dad?” Ben said from the doorway.

It was early morning. He and Scout were already dressed. Trudy was too. I was still under the covers luxuriating in the warmth of our first cold night.

“Yes?”

“Will you make us eggs?”

I sat up and tossed the covers off.

“Sure,” I said and pulled on some jeans.

I ambled into the kitchen and turned on the burner and pulled the eggs out of the fridge. And I grabbed the last remnants of our Michigan red raspberry jam.

Will I make breakfast for them, indeed.

2. Morning Sky

Their plane left in the morning. So we had to get them to the airport early. And so we all bundled into Debbie’s van and drove off before 7:00am.

The sky was as black. But as we drove east, a thin ribbon of red was visible on the horizon, pushing against the black night. And with each passing minute the red glow grew and the black sky receded.

We dropped them off at the curb and hopped out of the van to say goodbye. Debbie opened the back of the van, and Ben grabbed his suitcase. Scout pulled her pack onto her back. Trudy walked around with Guinness on his leash. I stumbled out from the backseat, able to hear the conversation for the first time.

We all hugged. And then they walked into the airport talking to each other without looking back.

The sky was no longer black. The red ribbon in the east had grown into a wide swath of pinkish/white, and day was dawning.

3. Not Sad But Sad

I stood at the dining room table for a moment, holding a cup of coffee in my hand.  Then I looked up at Trudy.

“You know,” I said, pausing for a moment, looking down at my cup. “I’m not sad they’re gone.”

She looked at me.

“We’re past that now,” I said. “We have a new life, and I really like it.”

“So I’m not sad that they’re gone, but it kind of makes me sad that I’m not sad.”

Trudy smiled and chuckled and sipped her coffee.

My brother came to town for ACL again this year to hear the musicians sing and play.

He came for three days, and for most of that time it was cool in the evenings, and the sky was blue and sunny during the day. He had a pass which got him back stage with the important people and the free food and the air conditioned toilets that were always stocked with toilet paper. But on the last day when we went with him (for the fair and industrious Trudy had bought Sunday tickets for us), he ate Salt Lick barbecue with us and drank Maine Root root beer with us and hung out on the grass with us and watched the milling people and listened to the bands.

And at the end of the day as Jupiter rose in the east as bright as an evening star but on the wrong side of the firmament… As the lights of Austin lit up behind the stage across the river… As the shining sun set behind us in the west…

The Eagles came out on stage.

They were the headline act. They were why we bought tickets. My first album, one of three cassette tapes that I took with me to play in my clock radio when I moved into my college dorm, was their Greatest Hits album. The songs are burned into my brain: the guitars, the bass lines, the harmonizing vocals. And when they began, I had tingles running down my spine and tears running down my cheeks.

Now, you must know by now that the whole tears-running-down-cheeks thing is hardly rare for me.

But really, picture it. A warm evening. Glowing lights of the city. Colored spotlights on stage. Silhouetted Oaks and and Walnut trees to the right and left. A field of standing, singing, dancing, clapping, waving people, geezers and kids alike, extending back as far as we could see.

We cheered. We danced. We swayed and jumped and whistled and clapped.

And like everyone else all around us, we knew the words and sang along with the band.

—
Original photos (c) ACL Festival.