On the verge

I've got two days left at my current job. It's a strange feeling. Every other time I've left a job for a new adventure I've felt a bit of trepidation about the new job or the commitment that comes with it. In fact, when I took the job I currently have, I recall actually freaking out in a QT gas station because I figured this was it. I was locked in for at least five years and I would likely retire with this job... or so I thought. 

Now 2years and 9months later, I'm rolling out to Tulsa and while I'm probably the least prepared for this adventure than I ever have been before, I'm feeling excited about strolling out of this job and this city. 

It's odd to look around my house and know that my days here are numbered (3 days!) and that when I leave I'm not coming back. Ever. There are moments when I want to lay on the floor in every room and soak it in, try to absorb it and all of it's memories before I got, but then I remember that I didn't forget the house when I went to college. And who I knew and what I did while here don't fade away just because I'm going some place else. If we spend our lives longing for the joy of yesterday, we never really enjoy today, and we'll never really see tomorrow.

Song for the day (and the move): Wild World - Cat Stevens
When I was 12 riding in my father's Mazda to my 7th grade parent teacher conferences, Wild World played on the radio. Papa sang along, like we usually did, and in between the first two verses, he paused to tell me that this was his song for me. Some day, he said, I'd move, I'd get married or I'd go off to college and settle down somewhere else, and it'd break his heart, but that was ok because that's what little girls are supposed to do.  When we got to the school, I couldn't manage to get my door open. Prompting my dad to tell me "I don't have high hopes for these conferences. You have to be smarter than the door." 

The Silence...

Andrew Belle - Make It Without You

Silence terrifies me. Seriously, and absolutely terrifies. I can not, for the life of me, think of a time when I have been surrounded by silence. If I found myself in the house alone with the t.v.s miraculously off, I would hear the sound of the dogs or I would quickly break out my walkman/iPod/radio and put something on. If somehow I wound up awake when the rest of the family was a sleep, I'd hear the steady off-beat snores from everyone in the house.  If I found myself in the middle of a glen in the woods surrounded by no one I'd hear the life and the wind around me. In a car with no radio, I'd hear the hum of the road and the roar of the engine. Even in my solitude there has always been sound.

Until this past week.

My father was the ultimate champion of a game without a name, a game we referred to as "Name the Artist." And that was the game. Walk in to a store, catch a commercial, turn on the radio and 95% of the time Dad would look at the people he was with, pick the person he thought was least likely to get it right and pose the question as a challenge. "Name the artist."

By the time I was 15, I was right the vast majority of the time. The last five years, I've been right so often my Dad stopped asking as a challenge but as an opening to a conversation to talk about music as it was, what it turned in to and who or what could save it. (He didn't have high hopes, and all of my offerings fell short... but then what can a 20 something pop hipster say to a 50 something rocker that's meaningful?)  To know enough of music to win at this game that often, I've spent the majority of my life with a radio on, my nose in a music magazine, or watching music documentaries.

So when he passed, I wracked my brain for an appropriate song to be the first song I heard to try to fill the void he left.  He was forever talking about the lasting power of classical music, he loved the Eagles, Dan Folgerberg, Pink Floyd and Supertramp, his song for me was by Cat Stevens, I've got a slew of favorite bands who all have fitting songs about loss.  I was wracking my brain for the one that was just right.  I couldn't come up with it in the time it took to get from the hospital room to the car. I couldn't come up with it for at least a solid 24 hours. Somehow, my never silent family managed to not play the radio or sing until a day or two later when we went shopping and finally turned on the radio.


The rest of the week was rather the same. Periods of silence punctuated by ill-fitting songs and stories.
I've never been afraid of turning on the radio, I've never been afraid of having a song that didn't fit get stuck in my head. I've never embraced the silence for fear of sound -even the right sound- tearing apart whats left of my heart.  But then, I've never been this alone.