Turn On The Lights, Turn Up The Music

Life hinges on so many fragile moments.

P is almost eleven, and she’s transforming from a kid into a young person. Joy, tears, irritation, the whole deal.

We went to Inside Out 2 the other night – highly recommended, BTW – and after the film, she and her friend were contemplating whether they would both go crazy with new emotions soon.

Yes, my dears. Yes, you will. But you will get through it. You are strong, you are beautiful souls, kind, caring, and lively.

I will do my best to ensure the world is worth it for you.

The other night, P came down from her room. This is notable because she’s spending more and more time there. She’s learning to savor alone time. And we support that, to an extent.

But she came down, and she wanted to dance.

And she danced, carefree, full of joy, just a ten year old bouncing around the room to Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) and various remixes. (It’s a damn good song, so don’t @ me. I can’t drink whiskey anymore, but it’s still a classic American metaphor, and we’re holding on to all the damn wholesome metaphors we can these days.)

She knows about the world’s ills. She knows about bad men and consent and climate change and orphaned otters (watch “Billy & Mollie” on Hulu), and she’s heard us mention a corrupt Supreme Court looking to enthrone a convicted felon and enshrine a world of $elf-righteou$ bullying. She’s learning about social changes and the fluctuations of friendships and the demands of popularity.

But for this night, at least, all that mattered was the music as she danced and twirled in her Grogu fuzzy pajamas around the living room.

I can only hope to support and sustain her long enough to see her dance her way into a bold new life in years to come, where freedom is still the theme, where love and forgiveness are still hallmarks of our society.

It’s been a dark time in our lives. Greed and corruption are running unchecked in the halls of privilege, and the hateful are finding ways to grab more power. We must do better.

For now, we have to hold on to signs of light.

There have been odd moments, odd moments of coincidence that are probably just that, coincidence.

I bought a new camping lantern a few weeks ago before we took the trailer to Lake Tahoe. It never worked. I tried multiple sets of new batteries, nothing.

The other day, I prepared to box it up as a defective return shipment. I was having a bad day. Stressed about politics, the weather, sports, you name it. On a whim, without changing anything, I tried turning the lamp on. It turned on.

“Huh,” I said. And didn’t think more about it for a while.

Then I finally got around to getting out the ladder to climb up to deal with one of our hanging light fixtures in the high-ceilinged living room, a mid-century modern installation whose bulbs had winked out one after another over a period of months. For someone with a fear of heights, it was always going to be an awkward proposition to fix.

So I climbed the ladder, stiffly, awkwardly, with a bit of trepidation. Think C-3PO trying to change a light bulb, and you’ve got the right idea.

These light-fixtures were tricky, with narrow-mouthed globes of glass containing an adorable little light bulb surrounded by a veritable kelp-bed of metal, like a tangled ball of paperclips. Very stylish, but for someone who doesn’t like heights and whose fingers have never been the most dextrous even before they crossed the 40-year threshold, not a fixture that makes changing a bulb as easy as licking a stamp.

Balancing on the ladder, trying to extract one of the dead bulbs in order to figure out what type to order, I slithered my fingers into the globe of glass, couldn’t quite get a grip on the small glass bulb but managed to shift it, make it twitch.

It turned on.

“Huh,” I muttered.

Keep in mind, I’m the one who, when thinking about changing a battery in our travel trailer, pictured himself being zapped across the asphalt of the storage facility. I was a bit mystified.

I moved to another globe, reached in, tapped the bulb.

It … turned on.

The next one stayed dead, but the one after that also turned on.

In the end, a good 6-8 bulbs sprang back to life, for no apparent reason and without a bulb needing to be changed. I did change one bulb, but those things are hard to extract.

So, yeah. Odd. I can’t explain it, but I’ll take the victory.

I’m sure a qualified electrician can explain to me why I apparently have developed the ability to resurrect light-bulbs, but I’m choosing to see it as a metaphor.

Keep dancing, Miss P. I’ll keep the lights on for you. One way or the other.