For all of the good things I have managed to accomplish in my life, God has this way of keeping me thoroughly grounded – chiefly in how almost every moment of glory will be paired with a moment that doesn’t just gently nudge me off of my self-made pedestal but blows me off of it as though I’d been the target of a bazooka. And most of the time, it proceeds in that order. There might be a moment where Kathy and I will be in a restaurant and someone comes up because they recognize me from the band shell concerts or something else I’ve done in the community and they will wax rhapsodically about how much they appreciate what I do. I will smile and blush – as will Kathy, bless her heart, although she is known to do some good-natured eye-rolling once the fans have moved on. But then without fail, something will happen – sometimes within the hour- which will make me feel like a very small and insignificant fish in this particular pond. It might be that I’ll call the office of Racine’s mayor to arrange a morning show interview, and whoever I’m talking to will have NO idea who I am, will have trouble spelling my name, will have never heard of WGTD or the morning show, won’t be able to get our call letters right, etc. Or I might find a note in my mailbox at church from someone complaining about how we never sing any familiar hymns anymore. Or I will be singing my heart out with the pops band – maybe the Carmen Dragon “America the Beautiful” and my gaze will be drawn without fail to somebody staring off into space, not at all enthralled, who proceed to pack up their lawn chair and exit the premises halfway through the song. (Actually, my least favorite memory of that sort of thing was when I sang that particular piece several years ago for a special concert down at the Kenosha marina, and couldn’t help but notice that at the back of the audience, two of our local state representatives- both of whom I know through the station – were carrying on a conversation, completely oblivious to the music being played and sung. I remember sailing up to the high G of “A – MER i ca! America! God shed His grace on thee” with all I had to give, bound and determined to at least get them to glance my way – but they never did. My impassioned performance – to say nothing of the band – was just so much Muzak to them.) I might grumble about that in the short term, but I know that it is just as well that life isn’t one ticker tape parade after another for me – and that in fact I taste much more than my fair share of glory than do a lot of people whose good work or impressive talents might not necessarily put them in the spotlight. So I’m grateful for this mix of sweet and sour and well aware that I probably ingest more “sweets” of this kind than what is ultimately good for me.
Anyway, Saturday was a classic sweet & sour day, although in this case the sour came first. On our way to Milwaukee to do some shopping, we stopped by someone’s house because we had heard via facebook that they were sitting rather morosely in their garage, hosting day two of a garage sale that – thanks to cloudy and rainy weather – wasn’t going all that well. We decided to swing by mostly just to let them know that we were thinking of them . . . but then I noticed a big pile of CDs for sale – fifty cents a piece – and decided to take a look. (There were a couple of classical things right on top.) So I rather excitedly went through the pile, grabbing the classical and discarding (naturally) things like “Holly Oat Bran Sings Folk Classics” or “Uncle Wilmer’s Jug & Banjo Band play Shortening Bread.” But then I came to the first Caritas CD, “How Sweet the Sound” – ouch – and then three disks later came across my own CD, “God gives me Wings” – double ouch. What was especially interesting about it was that just as I came across those two discoveries, I heard Kathy joking from the other side of the room “boy, Ihope you don’t find a Caritas CD in that pile!” And I don’t remember how her friend replied, but I decided to keep my little discovery to myself, and ended up cheerfully purchasing six or seven CDs with no mention of what else I had found in the pile. (I shared the story that night with Scott Dalzeil, the fine folk musician with whom I collaborated a few weeks ago – and he said that he tells his friends half-seriously that if they ever spot any of his CDs in a Goodwill or Salvation Army store, to be sure to buy them and he’ll buy it back from them – because it’s really really bad for business when your disks are seen by the public in good will stores. And I’m pretty sure that goes for garage sales, too!)
So I licked my wounds over that – hoping against hope that they were selling these because somehow they had come into possession of more than one copy of said disks – but mostly I felt like yesterday’s used Edsel. But then that night, we saw a musician friend of ours at the Yard Arm, where the aforementioned Scott Dalzeil (with wife Michelle) were performing. Jim came up to me at one point with his darling grandson in tow to tell me that his grandson loves to listen to my “God gives me Wings” CD. (Apparently, his young grandson – who’s maybe five years old or so – will say things like “play number twenty.”) I don’t know what it says about my music that five-year-olds seem to be among my most fervent fans – look out, Raffi – but this was a really sweet moment for me. . . made even sweeter because of the sour moment from earlier in the day.
That’s how it’s meant to be, I think. Life is best when served with Sweet & Sour Sauce.
As if we had a choice.