now playing: sarah mclachlan, “fallen”
today i rolled out of bed, early for me on a saturday, but rested nonetheless.
i showered without feeling rushed, pulled on some comfortable clothes and walked out of my house right into a beautiful day…the temperature was perfect, the sun was out, and the rest of the world felt like a serene place.
i got into my van, started driving towards my kids’ mom’s house – people were washing their cars, kids were playing…a beautiful little nichole kidman lookalike smiled at me while she was playing jumprope with her friends a few blocks from my house in this new neighborhood where i live…where i still can’t believe that i live.
i picked up my son and brought him along for the ride with me – i had to drive to phoenixville to pick up a computer from one of my “golden girls”…and i decided that we were taking backroads to get there, since we were still in no particular hurry.
he sat there in the shotgun seat, this miniature likeness of myself, looking out the window and taking in the sights…we listened to the radio, he sang along with “rock and roll hootchie koo”, half singing and half laughing. we passed a man with a huge tree trunk lying on its side behind him, carving frog scupltures with a chainsaw that were three or four feet high…
…we drove along in general silence, taking in the calm of the day. i passed houses with ‘bush 04’ signs on the lawn, and just couldn’t muster the necessary irritation to be angry at these people that i didn’t even know for their misguided faith.
as we were driving home from out appointed round, we took 113 to 401 and drove through the relative quiet and took in the breeze – we passed a vintage passenger bus converted into an RV and painted bright red and yellow and we looked at each other and laughed…
at some point, as we snaked up this two lane road, bob dylan’s “just like a woman” came on the radio, and i looked over at dylan, who looked back at me with a slight grin on his face…i said, “you know who this is, dude?”
he smiled bigger and said, “dad…nobody else sings like that.”
i turned my eyes back toward the road and smiled…content that perhaps i’m not doing as poor a job at passing on the important things as i sometimes like to believe. i watch him as he moves his hands in rhythm to the song, tapping on the door of the van where his elbow rests as he looks out the window.
he’s getting it.
and i think that from tomorrow on, “just like a woman” belongs to today, to this afternoon, riding in the VW van down a narrow backroad, taking in a day that comes but a few times in the space of a year.
...from the rear view mirror 