Transitions Are Exciting

Turned on iTunes and set it to shuffle and nearly fell of my seat when The Boys of Summer started playing because that song hits me now in a way I can’t properly express.

Always has, but now it is particularly…apt.

Read the lyrics, look at the moon and know that I am driving down that empty road. Moving through the desert with nothing but whatever songs are loaded on my phone and my thoughts.

Fifteen hundred miles feels like 15 million and yet it feels like…nothing.

There is an ethereal feel to this all, a surreal sense that I straddling planes and living between the moments. It is the transition and it is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys.

Transitions Are Exciting

Time to Say Goodbye is playing now and I am thinking about the Fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas. I am thinking about the lyrics in English and how few people know them. Thinking about how I appreciate them.

When you’re far away I dream of the horizon and words fail me.
And of course I know that you’re with me, with me.
You, my moon, you are with me.
My sun, you’re here with me with me, with me, with me.

Time to say goodbye.
Places that I’ve never seen or experienced with you.
Now I shall, I’ll sail with you upon ships across the seas,
seas that exist no more,

The Las Vegas of my youth doesn’t exist any more. The strip can be crowded and it is harder to find a cheap room but it has become like Disneyland for adults.

Five Star restaurants, Broadway shows and hotels that are simply breathtaking.  How much money did they spend to bring Venice to America.

It is strange to have to go west to reach Vegas and stranger still for it not to be a five hour car ride. This time around it is not the final destination, but it could be a place for lunch.

And as goofy as ever if I do decide to hit I will drive into the city blaring Viva Las Vegas on the car stereo but in my head I am sure I’ll be hearing the theme to Dallas.

Children Are Waiting

Somewhere down the road the children are waiting. Somewhere down the road these kids are pulling at me, pushing and tugging through the air, asking dear old dad to put 18 hours behind the wheel so that I get home faster.

I tell them that I will get home as soon as possible but that I am going to focus on driving safely so they should plan on it taking three days for me to get there. I’ll still spend hours behind the wheel but I won’t be completely spent when I get there.

In the midst of thinking about this an old memory flashes into my head. I am twenty and I drive for countless hours to see my girlfriend. Can’t get their fast enough and the energy of youth and anticipation of things to come in the night pushes me to drive harder and faster.

Flashback to the present and I am thinking about how their tractor beam is pulling me in. Thinking about how my preteen boy has noticed that girls move differently than we do.

He barely managed to get that out and I wonder what else he is noticing and if we are on the verge of a new dawn. Daughter has a list of things she wants to do and makes sure to tell me that no one gives me more hugs and kisses than she does.

Soft giggle follows and I smile because daddy’s girl is trying to set the stage for something. She has something planned and I don’t know what it is.

Don’t really care because she is daddy’s girl.

Can’t wait to see those rug rats of mine.

And You Won’t The Same

I keep hearing this clip from the movie version of The Hobbit:

Bilbo Baggins: …Can you promise that I will come back?

Gandalf: No. And if you do… you will not be the same.

I am coming back, but I am not the same. That is not a value judgment or indictment of my time in Texas, just an acknowledgment that things are different.

You can visit the same river many times but every time you do you know that something is different.

• Saved: Life