Presence

Lost and Found

July 29, 2023

It’s easy to get lost if you don’t pay attention to where you are going. This is a bad habit of mine.

I am especially prone to lostness if I am out in the world with a friend or my children. I might be the one driving the car, but I don’t usually focus much on where I parked the car. It seems like it should just be good enough to have found a parking spot, right?

You might understand this if you have ever shopped at the Roseville Costco (or possibly any  Costco, really). The parking lot there is so stressful that even finding a spot feels like victory. Because if you managed to get there by navigating the terrible freeway and the even worse freeway off-ramp and the diabolical left turn lanes into Costco, you should just be able to relax and not have to think about where you ended up in that massive, hellish parking lot. Generally, forgetting where the car is parked is not a huge dealio, because whoever I am with remembers. This is one of the nice things about parenting teenagers and young adults. They tend to notice things like this.

We made it home from my son’s college orientation this week. They had two days of helpful information sessions for parents and incoming students. He got to spend the night in the dorms, register for classes, and eat in the dining hall. I got to share meals and some activities with him. We made it to Santa Barbara by 7:45 am, found Parking Garage 22, which was the assigned parking garage for our session, and followed the directions of the helpful student workers who were stationed right outside the garage to locate the check-in area. Continue Reading…

Daily Grace, Presence

Music in a Target Parking Lot

July 22, 2023

Who were these bands? At first, I had no idea. But now I do, at least a little. Which makes my world bigger and brighter.

I went to a Shinyribs concert with a friend this week. She did not bully me into it, although she later confessed that she was afraid that she might have. It was a band that I had never heard of playing a type of music that I wasn’t familiar with. Wikipedia labels their sound as “Southern soul, swamp-funk.” I did not know much about “swamp-funk.” I drove about 100 miles to her house, because she is a friend who does not live close by, and then we drove about another hour to the venue.

The concert was outside in a cordoned off area at the back of a brewery which was at the back of a Target parking lot. Somehow, they created a concert venue there. Somebody fenced off an area, created a “grassy” (I think it was Astroturf) hill where concert goers could sit in low-backed chairs, brought in a few picnic tables facing a stage, and sectioned off an area in the middle near the stage where folks could dance. There was a bar at the back and food was included with your concert ticket if you purchased a package. So along with a concert, you could enjoy tri-tip with German potato salad and tasty baked beans or barbequed ribs with French fries.

I have been to a few concerts in my life, but none in recent years.

(It is possible that the last concert I attended was by Barry Manilow in Ohio when my daughter, who recently graduated from college, was in first grade. Barry Manilow is not swamp-funk).

I certainly had never been to a concert like that. The band: Shinyribs. The band members: mostly not young. Mostly, I think, possibly older than even me? Which was also true of many of the concert goers.

None of that mattered, though.

How could it matter when the 50-something lead singer,  in a bright green shirt and orange hat, careened around the stage with crazy good dance moves and nonstop energy, even doing the splits on stage?

You wouldn’t even have known that it was an older crowd, if you closed your eyes a little, enough so that you didn’t notice all the grey hair, and only saw the dancing. This crowd was alive. The dance floor was packed. There was nothing but joy there.

I felt the joy, too. Which was what my friend wanted for me, I think. Because the last time I saw her (since you don’t always see friends who live that far away as often as you would like), I was going through a bit of a rough patch. You know about those, I bet. Continue Reading…