Comes a time...

Yesterday was set aside to be spent exclusively for organizing my office...something that had to be done badly. House was pretty quiet, only Shane and I. Everyone else had decided to risk their necks going skiing, not a skill that I've managed to aquire. However, early in the day, while I was helping Shane pick out something to watch on TV while mom submersed herself in papers, I noticed that the movie channel was going to be playing "Neil Young-Heart of Gold" So much for my best laid plans.

For the next two hours I was swallowed up by his vidoetaped debut of his "Prairie Wind" album at the Rymann Auditorium in Nashville. I bought that album last spring...and I guess I must have worn it out, because it's plum disappeared. I so enjoy his music. As I watched, I realized how strange it was that he's on one the world's most well known singers on one of the most famous stages in the world, singing songs about the little town half an hour away. I wonder if Cypress River ever expected to develop such notority. You listen to his history, to the story behind the songs, to his memories of listening to Ian Tyson's "Blowin in the wind" on a jukebox at Falcon Lake, and you realize that incredible things happen to those who follow their dreams.

I've never met Neil Young, but I've always connected with him. We both come from smalltown Manitoba, we both write our own story in our songs, we both have kids with special challenges. For a long time my old piano teacher Annie Donald had us excited that we were kinda, almost related to Neil Young through his mother, by marriage, once removed....or something. Doesn't matter....however she explained it, made me want to work at the piano a little harder.

Funny how a song can take you back in time too. After all the new songs were introduced, he sang some of his older stuff. I remember surviving my first year of university only because I had an old record player there, and I played "Harvest moon" over, and over, and over....as I listened to him sing 'Comes a time' yesterday, I was instantly transported back to that dorm room, to the naive farm-fresh dreamer that I was, to all the big dreams I'd held. Seems that that girl lived a long, long time ago.

As the nostalgia passed, and the little lump in my throat cleared, I realized that maybe things haven't changed all that much. I still sit in my room listening to Neil (and Jann, and Sarah, and all the other's who have pulled me through), I'm still farm-fresh in a weathered sort of way although not as naive, and I still have big dreams. I also realized how many of my big dreams have come true since that time...the perfect love that was wished for has been found, the opportunity to follow my passion for music has be granted, a happy home (check), a beautiful family (check), a solid circle of friends (check), the dream to feel safe and confident in who I am (check)....I guess it's all turned out the way it was meant to. Now, when I hear "comes a time" I realize that my time has come...I really am one of the lucky ones.
L
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