“And that’s the river . . .”

Tags

blue-collar, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Coming of Age, love story, The River Tour 2016

I bought Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” when I was 17, and I played it until I had memorized every song. Mr. Jones, my English teacher, introduced me to The Boss sensing perhaps that his plainspoken poetry would appeal to my blue-collar sensibilities. He knew I had never seen a Cadillac or a State Trooper – most likely he hadn’t either – and that I wouldn’t know the difference between a highway and the motorway, but he knew I knew disappointment. I knew about the dole and diminished opportunities all around us. I knew pregnant girls whose boyfriends married them. I knew men who worked at the factory, and when the factory stopped working I knew they would never be the same. I knew drizzling rain and the rhythm of life in a small town in a tiny troubled country on the other side of the Atlantic. I knew people not much older than me were leaving that life. I knew I would too even though at 17, I mostly had Friday on my mind – Out in the Street.

As Bruce Springsteen revisited “The River” on a Thursday night in Phoenix, Arizona, flashes of my teenage self surfaced, a little tougher, and wiser maybe, hardened by the beginnings and endings that make up a full life – the marriage, the mortgage, the raising of a good person, the career, the cancer, the death of the man who had for so many years quickened my heart, the worry about what might come next and the waiting – always the waiting – for the other shoe to drop. In the middle of my life, it occurred to me that my parents – the people I fought so hard at 17 – were once in the middle of theirs with beautiful dreams that were dashed like some of mine. I know now the darkness that got the best of us . . .

Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say . . . I swear I never meant to take those things away

Unloading every song, I wonder did Springsteen know how well he was telling the stories that made up my Ken’s life? The one about not being drafted to Vietnam because he was the only surviving son of a man who died in military service; the one about how he cut his hippie hair when his buddies didn’t come back; and, the one about trading in his beloved motorcycle and the muscle car and settling down when he and his girl were just too young. Settling. On they went, for 27 odd years, each of them making compromises and taking care of what became obligations.

Then, a shot of courage one hot Saturday afternoon in a parking lot outside a place a bit like Frankie’s Joint – he showed his cards. All of them. And, in the space of a heartbeat, he turned from that life – because the alternative was like “dying by inches” – to follow instead a heart beating wildly.

Cause point blank, bang bang baby you’re dead.

Oh, the price you pay – a young man’s song.

That man of mine brought with him the shirt on his back and a shiny Ford Thunderbird. Young then, he had the heart – and he had the stomach – for all of it. All of it. All in. He would drive all night just to buy me some shoes.

For as long as we could be young, we had a great run, raising the kind of hell that belongs in a rollicking Springsteen song. It lost much of its luster before he died and, had he lived, we may not have made it. The “in sickness” part of the deal sucked.

We were married for one day shy of 22 years, and together we did something good – really good. He was in my corner – always – and any regrets are so tiny now that they don’t matter. The lesson? Well, it’s about time. It is always about time. We have only so much and not enough to waste to learn how to live and to live well with another person, a partner.

Going back to The River with Springsteen after 35 years, I found myself believing that another opportunity to live and love better – to do something good or better – is just up the road.

We’ll see . . .

The River is how you learn the adult life and you choose your partner and you choose your work and that clock starts ticking and you walk alongside not only the people you’ve chosen to live your life with but you walk alongside of your own mortality and you realize you have a limited amount of time to raise your family, to do your job, to try and do something good. That’s ‘The River.’

Yes, Bruce, yes it is.