Thursday, July 25, 2013

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Sam, in a funny room in a museum in Rochester
two springs ago.

My older son, Sam, is playing guitar in his room.

Frankly, there is a not a day that's gone by in the past few years, that he hasn't... that there isn't the sound of his guitar (or, sometimes now, a banjo) being strummed adeptly from behind his closed door. And when he is -- it is -- there's not a time that I don't stop whatever I am doing to listen intently, filled with the music, with his ability, and grateful for the fleeting chance.

This is one of the best small joys in my life, in a life blessed with small joys, to eavesdrop on my son making music.

In a few short weeks, the room will fall silent.

He will pack his guitar and his clothes and head off to college, and the next phase of his independent life.

That fact is like the funny room in the museum in this photo to me. No matter how hard I stare at it -- the words encapsulating it on the screen -- I can't make sense of it,
or find my balance.

Yesterday, my younger son and I were watching our dvr'd episode of America's Got Talent while we ate lunch together picnic-style on my bed (my room has the big-screen TV), and in a rare moment of joining in, Sam came in and watched the entire episode with us. He never does this. Or, at least, rarely.

During it, a commercial for that new Michael J. Fox sitcom came on and we were all talking about how good it looked, and I gleefully said, "We can all watch it together in the fall."

As soon as I said it, I realized.

In the fall, we will be three in the evenings, not four.

And even though his door is so often closed with him behind it, how I will miss his presence and the weeping, strumming of his guitar.