February is the new April

The path riddled with puddles

My hair frizzing with the humidity

I wear a hat, Gore Tex coat 

But there is no snow

I need a freeze to shock my system

So that in the spring I can bloom

No rest, no hibernation

Christmas holidays straight to beach season

I need woolen socks

Steaming cups of hot cocoa

Deep sleep in a downy bed

Not this year

Eyes wide awake, spirit tired, 

But still, I put on my boots,

Zip up

Prepare for what’s next

My dad and my stepmom are on their way over. They’re in town from Florida. It’s their first visit to my rented townhouse, to my post-4,000 sq. ft. cul-de-sac life.

I am cleaning like a banshee. It won’t be good enough. They’ll see the spots that I’ve missed. Nit pick. Criticize.

I now recognize that this frenzied feeling in my chest, this churning in my gut, has a name: anxiety. I am anxious for my Daddy to see the place where his baby girl lives. The place that he, when I first moved in, asked, “Is it infested?” Last month he asked, “Do you have good heat?” His questions reflecting his anxiety that I am at risk; unsafe.

I am 53. I am fine.

I love my new home, familiar tzchotkes and photographs on the table tops collected from a lifetime of travels and gifts from beloved friends, my guitars hanging on the wall, folk music wafting in from the kitchen Bose speaker a client gave me for Christmas.

I am barking at my daughter, “Make your bed. Clean up your room.” I am teaching her to be anxious. This is *not* the family tradition I want to pass onto her.

I want to breath. Relax my shoulders. Feel confident in my choices: to leave my too-big lonely home, my too-small lonely marriage.

I am making my own way. My own living.

My father is coming. He’s old now. Every visit, potentially the last. He’ll see the dirt on the floor. The dishes drying next to the sink. Hopefully he’ll also see me.  I do.

Summer evenings of 1984, as I was gearing up to leave for college in Ohio 7 hours away, my best friend and I cruised rural Howard County roads in his mom’s smooth-riding Peugeot, listening to music and laughing like crazy. One night, JP popped in a cassette tape from a band I’d never heard before. The lyrics rang loud and clear to my melancholy heart: “IIIII will be with you again…IIIIII will be with Yoooouuu aaaaagain…”  I didn’t know then how true they’d be.

Sometimes you yearn for SO HARD for something that you can almost believe it has actually happened. A thing that seems so real, a story told so many times, that you no longer can tell reality from fiction. This is not one of those times.

It was after “The Joshua Tree” album was released, that the dreams began: Bono (U2’s lead singer) and me, sitting together, on a back, wooden staircase in an off campus-house somewhere, engaging in the most thought-provoking, discussions, the most wonderful philosophical debates. Stealing time, as though we had snuck away, from a frat party, perhaps, to meet and discuss, and maybe even solve, the myriad problems of the world.

 I couldn’t wait to get to sleep at night. The dreams were so real. I felt like I really knew Bono and that someday, when the time was right, we would meet. It was simply a matter of time. The dreams lasted every night, for about three weeks. And then, as inexplicably as they’d started, just like that, they stopped. I missed them. Missed my friend and our conversations. 

Soon enough though, real life took over–graduation, a marketing job, then marriage, a house, a couple of kids. I’d nearly forgotten about the dreams. But then, I had one more: I was backstage, at some sort of a special event after-party. Bono was there, too. From across the space, our eyes met, and he strolled toward me, his arms opening wide as he approached. He said my name, so familiar. And he embraced me. 

He hugged me, in his most honest and present Bono way, and I, ridiculously, I began to laugh. Taken aback, he straightened his arms, pushed back my shoulders, and looked right into my eyes. “Why are you laughing?“ he asked. And in my unbearably lifelike dream, I said, “Because.” “I’ve always known that this moment would happen.” Goosebumps. And then I woke up. [sigh]

I try to see U2 whenever they come to town. A decade ago, for the 360 tour, I splurged and went to two cities–DC and Charlottesville. The shows were only 2 days apart. A Tuesday and a Thursday. Back home on Friday, I noticed on the tour schedule (God love the internet, even 10 years ago). I saw that on that Saturday, Bono and the Edge would be playing a special event in New York City, at Carnegie Hall. It was Gavin Friday’s (Bono’s best friend’s) 50th birthday. A whole bunch of stars were coming together to celebrate and raise money for Project Red, (Bono’s fundraising organization for HIV/Aids relief in Africa). 

I thought, “What the heck?” We’ll make it a Trifecta! And I bought a ticket to the show, and a ticket on the bus, early the next morning. Sometimes life begs you to leap. (It helped that my sister in law, who lives in Manhattan, was visiting us.) I borrowed her apartment keys and Vamoosed myself to Manhattan. I confess to myself that the quest to fulfill my “Bono dream” was helping to propel that bus.

The show was an incredible mish-mash of songs by massive, inebriated, stars, Courtney Love, Shane McGowan, Fred Armisen (as Prince), Scarlett Johansen, Joel Gray, Lady Gaga! Laurie Andersen! Lou Reed! It was a discombobulated, wonderful mess. Ryan Reynolds was seated directly in front of me, Dennis Hopper was a few rows away; and, Ali Hewson, Bono’s beautiful wife and his two daughters, Eve and Jordan, were four seats away. It was surreal. If ever my dream were to come true, surely tonight was the night.

But after the show, rather than contrive to get myself backstage, and live out my fantasy, my premonition, I opted to leave, out the backdoor, with all the other nobodies. We waited like lemmings for “Bono and the Boys,” Deities! to exit the theatre. Wouldn’t you know, I wasn’t *even* facing the right direction when he walked past, climbing into the backseat of an idling black Cadillac SUV, and skirted away, nullifying any chance of my dream ever coming true.

He was “right there” that night. So present. Bono the man, the dad, singing more to and for his wife and daughters than anyone else in all of Carnegie Hall. The experience was one of the greatest of my life. I reconciled all of it. I still loved U2, but no longer had conversations with the lead singer in my sleep. Sometimes dreams are just dreams… 

A year later I found myself back in New York–to celebrate my sister in law’s 40th. She wanted to take a double decker tour bus, inquire where famous people live. We passed Jerry Seinfield’s apartment, Alec Baldwin’s upper East Side condo, John Lennon’s Dakota on West 72nd, and on West 74th, the San Remo…home of…

That’s how, when the next day, October 25, 2010, when after a long day of sight-seeing, my friends and I found ourselves at the western end of Central Park, emerging from Strawberry Fields, that’s when I knew we were only a block away from…

What could it hurt? To walk by? So we did. And when we got there, I saw. An idling black Cadillac SUV.  Just like the one I’d seen him get into the previous fall…after the Carnegie Hall show…so we loitered, maybe, just a little bit…

We wondered where to go for dinner. My sister in law chatted with the doorman, asked for his recommendation. 

A man and his wife exited the building. Again, my back turned in the wrong direction. My sister in law hollered my name. I looked up. The black leather jacket, the slicked back hair, the gait, I knew that man! 

Simultaneously intent and terrified that he’d think I was a stalker (I was a block away from the Dakota!) I ran towards him and hollered out, “Bono!” 

There he was! His face was right in front of mine. His eyes, his clear, blue eyes, were right in front of mine. What to do? What to say? I did the only thing I possibly could have done in that moment, “Can I have a hug,” I asked?

And, just like in my dream, he opened his arms wide and wrapped them around me. He embraced me. Bono embraced me! This was not a dream! I could feel the actual softness of his cheek against mine, breath in the spicy, citrus-y scent of his cologne. This was it. This was THE moment. I began to laugh, and I looked him in the eye and I told him: That I’d dreamt this exact moment—more than a decade before. That we’d met backstage, and that he’d hugged me, and that I’d laughed. 

Because now, as it was then, it was true: “IIIII will be with youuuu againnnn…” I’d always known this moment would happen. 

The End