I embarrassed my daughter this summer while at a concert. I know… I’m a mom of two nineteen-year-olds and chances are high that I embarrass them both on a regular basis. They’re pretty sure I do it on purpose sometimes, and to be fair, sometimes I do. Not often though, at least, not purposefully. I just try to be myself, have some fun, and try to model to them both that it’s okay to just be unapologetically real. Often, I’m a big goofball. I giggle when I think I’m a little funny. I laugh aloud when I think I’m hilarious. I tell jokes that would qualify as dad jokes, and I give my take on things, but usually not before giving the topic some serious consideration and, often, research before I form my opinion. I also cry when something makes me unexpectedly happy or sad. This time was the latter.
My daughter wanted to see Noah Kahan when his Stick Season concert came to Western Washington. We had both discovered his music around the same time, and each found some of his songs hauntingly attached to our hearts. She asked if I would go with her to the concert months before she came home for her summer break. I loved that she asked me! I also hadn’t been to a concert since before I was married twenty-five years earlier and seldom went into crowded places due to anxiety and claustrophobia that I’ve rocked since I was sixteen. Knowing how excited she was about the concert; I didn’t want to do anything that would diminish the experience. I suggested she ask her twin brother if he’d like to go, and if he couldn’t go for any reason, then I’d love to go with her. She asked her brother, who said ‘maybe’. She had bought them tickets to see Machine Gun Kelly for their eighteenth birthday in Spokane for his first concert and her second, the first having been to see someone she hadn’t heard of before, but her bestie implored her to go. It was a mediocre first concert experience and following that with Machine Gun Kelly’s loud theatrics was a good redirect into how engaging concerts can be. Unfortunately, my son had just started a new job that had him getting up early during the week. The concert was on a weeknight, and he ultimately turned down the offer. I was excited to be joining her, and she insisted on paying for the tickets and dinner at the venue.
Although it was crowded, the venue was outdoors. We walked the entirety of the stadium looking for the best spot to take in the show. It was open seating on the lawn, and I’d brought a small blanket in my backpack for us to camp on. Lots of people brought big lawn or camp chairs which they spaced out in the best viewing area. Knowing my kid had paid for her tickets and likely paid the same as all those people on their big chairs, I identified a spot between two parties that would fit our butts and most of my blankie, and I plopped down in the spot as my daughter tried desperately to find somewhere less obvious. The chair-dwellers closest to us opted to close the foot-plus gap between their chairs to allow a little more space for us all to coexist. I looked towards the stage where the opening act was getting started. I looked up at the beautiful summer sky. I looked at my beautiful daughter who was emitting nervous energy that I would have loved to calm, but she excused herself to go find us some dinner while I held our small camp on the hillside. My claustrophobia didn’t show up even once.
In my lifetime, aside from those that the high school rock band I sang in put on, I have been to very few concerts. I vaguely remember seeing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Rick Springfield at our winter fair when I was in elementary school. My family saw Jefferson Airplane on my tenth birthday in Reno. I went to Lallapalooza in San Diego with Janes Addiction and Siouxsie and the Banshees between high school and college. I saw Oingo Boingo in my UCI days, and James Taylor on the waterfront in San Diego. He also is claustrophobic, so his concert was an open-air venue. Just before moving to Washington State, I went with my sisters and then brother-in-law and saw Tori Amos, also in San Diego. That was the show that moved me most and endeared her in my heart as an amazing performer. When I moved to Washington State, I won a music experience through KNDD-107.7 to see the band LIVE in concert on their Throwing Copper tour. I believe that was the last big concert I attended. It was a few years before I even met my husband, so, one might say I was overdue.
If you haven’t made time to listen to Noah Kahan’s music, I highly recommend making some time when you’re feeling a little mellow. As the sun began to set, the main event got underway. The music filled the amphitheater, and the audience was engaged. He prefaced most of his songs with either a ‘thank you’ for being there or a little story about the song he was about to sing. When he started with “I stopped playing this one for a while because it’s kind of a downer, but so many people reached out to say how much it’s helped them, so here it is…” then launched into his song I’ll Call Your Mom.
I’d heard it before but hadn’t listened closely. Perhaps it was just the connected energy of the concert, or maybe it was the way he prefaced it, but there, in the darkness in our spot on the hillside, we stood with the crowd as he sang, and I quietly cried. I felt the grief that came through the lyrics about a friend in the hospital after trying to kill himself. Having lost my brother to suicide fifteen years ago next month, not that I’m counting, and having planned my own demise three or more times in my years on this planet, it wasn’t surprising the song resonated so deeply with me. My daughter has had her own fight with depression in her short lifetime, and I could see on her face that she was connecting to the moment too. I put my arm around her in a hug, and she seemed to bristle. She was looking at my face, and the quiet tears streaming down appeared to anger her. She returned her gaze to the stage. That was it. I stood there in my space reminding myself that it’s okay to emote, and that, regardless of how embarrassed my kid was to be with me at that moment, I wasn’t alone in the dark with tears streaming down. I found comfort in that. I tried to talk with her about it after the concert, but she quickly changed the subject.
In a mostly unrelated turn, my daughter has stopped talking to me altogether. It’s been over two months, and I’m still an asshole. To be clear, I’m not really an asshole. I’m a mom of two teenagers who are enjoying their ‘over-18-and-can’t-be-told-to-do-anything-by-anybody’ freedom. One of the two has come home from college to redirect after a not entirely successful first year. He and I are getting to know each other better and making time for one another in this new post-high school phase of parent-child relationship. The other may never come home, and I am trying to figure out how to find peace with that. In the meantime, I write, meditate, I pray, and I try to send out as much love and light to my girl as I can muster. She will always live with me in my heart and will be welcome in my home when she’s ready. I have often thought of ‘Parenting’ as exercises in learning to let go. How does one let go of someone who helped make me the me I am today? I don’t want to let go, but I also can’t keep putting energy into a space that won’t accept any without sacrificing myself in the process. So cheers to growth and growing pains! May both be for the better.
PNW JONES 