For twenty-five years I’ve either pulled a microphone out of a mike stand, or clipped a microphone to my tie and worked a room. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a day, and when I was younger, sometimes for as long as two weeks. I thought I had pretty much performed in every way, shape or form, but this week was a new one on me. This week, for a precious few moments, I shared the stage with my son.
Now, like most proud fathers, I’ll be the first to tell you this isn’t just any old son. He is a born performer, and it was he who brought me up on his stage, and not the other way around. This moment in time lasted for a few minutes, but I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.
So why do I bring this story to you today? Is it to brag? I hope not. I’m not big on alerting the world as to my good fortunes, or wonderful moments in life. That works for some, and good for them, it’s just not for me. I can honestly say that never in my life have we sent out even a Christmas message stating all the wonderful things we did as a family through the year. Like I said, that works for some, just not for me. It would work for me if those same people sent out another letter once a year stating the disappointments and challenges that family experienced through the year as well. That’s would be honest, but that’s not going to happen, and I’m straying too far from the message anyway. The message I’m meaning to share with you is that it almost didn’t happen because of all the reasons I manufactured not to go to New York and do it. Here are just a few…
- I was feeling lazy.
- I travel too much already.
- Train travel isn’t free.
- Train travel isn’t fast.
- It’s not as if we’ve never seen him on his birthday.
- There will be plenty of other opportunities to see him perform.
No, it was a moment to remember because Ronni and I got two train tickets, left the comfortable confines of our home on a Sunday, went to New York, stayed at our son’s apartment, (that could be another blog), took him to dinner, and celebrated his birthday on stage with him. There were so many reasons not to do it, but we did do it, and we were rewarded with such a nice experience we may have started a tradition and end up doing it once a year.
How many times in our lives do we talk ourselves out of things we know we should do, but don’t because they are too hard to do? How many experiences do we miss out on because doing them means coping with a case of the “unknowns?” This is not holiday card from someone cherry picking all the joyous moments in his life and sharing them with you. This is a reminder from someone who got lucky. In a lifetime of performances I got lucky not just performing with my son, but also watching the joy in his face, and the faces of his friends. It sure beat catching the preseason football game I would have been watching sitting at home and wondering how he was doing.
Oh, and we killed!