Thanksgiving

Sipping a wee bit of scotch and soda.  Plunging off the suspension bridge of nostalgia on a bungee cord made of love and words and memory.  Snapping back heavenward on an updraft of air smelling like all mixed up baby lotion and hands that smell like wet diapers (and scotch).  

There is/was a group from Hawaii/Chicago/don't know where else called Poi Dog Pondering.  I purchased one of their albums on a hot summer day in 1990. This song (lyrics below) is on that album.  Emma and I had it as one of our first wedding dance songs.  (By the way, if you need to know about Emma and my relationship, look no further for a start than how we each needed a song of our own as our first wedding dance.)  

This song makes me think of Tilly and Emma and my life today.  I had no idea that day--a clueless college kid, living in Dinkytown in a house for the summer, no idea what I wanted to be, or do, or make out of my life--that that album held this diamond which, when unraveled and laid out in the sun, is in hindsight an absolute road map of the subsequent 19 years.  Can't believe how relevant that song is now to life as I know it.  (The mandolin makes the song, gives it that achy, 'unrequited love that you're grateful' for feeling...and really, it's literally only a wee bit of scotch in my half full glass).      

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Thanksgiving, by Poi Dog Pondering

Somehow I find myself far out of line from the ones I had drawn. 

Wasn't the best of paths, you could attest to that, but I'm keeping on.  

Would our paths cross if every great loss had turned out our gain? 

Would our paths cross if the pain in had cost us was paid in vain? 

There was no pot of gold, hardly a rainbow lighting my way

But I will be true to the red, black and blue that colored those days.  

I owe my soul to each fork in the road, each misleading sign

'Cause even in solitude, no bitter attitude can dissolve my sweetest find

Thanksgiving for every wrong move that made it right.