Leave the Umbrella Home

Last night I checked off a big bucket list item.

In the Uber to the venue, our driver said we would have fun hanging with the college kids who made up most of Flagstaff. My guess was that he didn’t know who the headliner was. Shame.

We walked into the amphitheater nestled in the pines. There were so many gray-haired folks there, you’d think the title sponsor was AARP. We were here to go back in time.

I was a bit hesitant when we found our seats, just three rows back, and a speaker the size of a refrigerator loomed above us. The smell of weed hung in the air.

Good for you, Boomers.

Plant 4.0

While there was no John Bonham, Jimmy Page, or John Paul Jones, there was Robert Plant. Finally.

I know many of us were hoping he’d sing old favorites. Songs that brought us back to some of the best memories of our childhood.

Mostly, that didn’t happen.

We didn’t get 1973 Robert Plant; we got the 78-year-old 4.0 version. We got a man who tossed rock, country, folk, and blues into an empty glass and sprinkled it on us like fairy dust.

Watching Plant on stage, I saw no separation between man and music. His body twitched, dipped, and glided with the melodies. Decades and decades later, old, gray-haired, and wrinkled, he was completely in his element.

And now, I am too.

Book by Book

A few months ago, my husband and I moved from our home of 30 years to our summer home. Combining two households and hauling shit we thought we needed to Goodwill took months.

My boxes and boxes of books sat in the corner. A collection that spanned decades.

Unpacking them was a journey back in time through every era. There was very little fiction save for my Harry Potter series. They hold a special memory because I read them to a captivated first-grade class for an hour a day.

There were books I forgot and suddenly wanted to read again, and others that reminded me of who I was when I first opened them.

If I met someone from my distant past, they would recognize me through the wrinkles and gray hair.

They’d recognize a few songs.

If they stayed long enough, they would see how much the music had changed. They’d see me swaying, twisting, and bending in imperfect harmony.

I cried when Plant gave us a sliver of the past. He sang “The Rain Song.”

For a moment I was the teenager sitting in my bedroom again.

She had no idea how much rain was coming.

She didn’t drown; she grew. Book by book.

Rain

The Robert Plant who showed up in the amphitheater wasn’t the 1973 version. He came back different.

Maybe better.

Discomfort. Adversity. Challenge. Loss.

Drops of difficulty fall on all of us right alongside happiness, joy, love, and everything else that makes a life.

So when Robert Plant sings, “Upon us all, a little rain must fall.”

Leave the umbrella at home.