Welcome to the Suburbs, Mama!

Picture by IDuke via Wikimedia Commons

A career opportunity necessitated a cross-country move about six years ago.  It was summertime when we moved into our new house, and in the twilight of July heat, we could hear some loud music and thumping bass as we unpacked our cardboard boxes after the moving truck finally pulled away.

“Someone is really blasting away on that Gwen Stefani,” my husband said, surprised.  Although we like music, and he is a professional musician, our new gas-lamp subdivision with pinestraw-lined landscaping didn’t strike us as a place where neighbors would violate the unspoken code of suburban restraint or HOA noise covenants.  We continued unpacking while speculating who the secret party animals were, while simultaneously hoping we would be able to make friends with them soon.

As it turns out, it actually was Gwen Stefani that we were hearing.  Our neighborhood is suburban, but across the nearby commuter highway and about a mile and a half away (as the crow flies), there is an outdoor amphitheater venue that is currently managed by LiveNation.  That summer, it became part of our routine:  look at the concert schedule, grill out on the back deck, and have a few drinks on the screen porch while listening to the concert for free.  Sometimes, depending on the wind and humidity the lyrics would be clear as day and—much to my husband’s disappointment—I could sing along.  On other evenings, we would be lucky if we could hear the bass line.

I love music.  I’m not great with naming song titles or artists, but I can sing the words to an eclectically broad spectrum of songs with both a modicum of accuracy and an abundance of confidence.  My husband likes to occasionally ask me—while I’m belting out some female power ballad—“hey do you know why Stevie Nicks sang that song?”  He’ll briefly pause, before following up:  “So you don’t have to.”

My husband…I often joke with people that he is the first and last musician I’ll ever date.  Its true:  God love the man, but musicians have issues.  Which is not a complaint, really.  It’s an acknowledgement about where good music comes from.  After learning how we met, folks often offhandedly (and ignorantly) comment that I must have been a groupie.  I don’t take offense to much, but to this label, I object!  I was no groupie; I won my husband in a bar bet fair and square!  A friend and I were out celebrating a birthday while we were all home for the summer after our freshman year of college, and she bet me I couldn’t go home with the lead singer of the band.  The joke is on me, I guess:  twenty-five years later and he’s still at my house.

Twenty-five years…we met when I was nine.  Seriously, though, there was a nine in my age and I was too young to have been in that bar.  I was young, but to my credit (in the eyes of my future husband), I was experienced!  We married two years after meeting, and we were married well over a decade before deciding to have kids.  While I like to think that made us better parents, it certainly made us better people.

We had a lot of fun–a lot of fun–but now we’re just a couple who lives in the suburbs and grills out on the back porch.

Our life is extremely normal, traditional even, but in one sense its still very unique:  I work full time and he takes the day-to-day lead with our kids.  It’s a fortunate arrangement, most assuredly for me (career wise) and for our children (who come home to a parent after school and never went to daycare).  But it wouldn’t be fair to be grateful for our opportunities without also acknowledging the sacrifices of a man used to entertaining thousands who traded it all in to drive carpool, fold laundry, and follow his wife’s career.

He does still perform, but not as often, and not as far away.  And although we like listening to the concerts on the back porch, he’s selective about the shows he’ll go to see live.  He prefers not to see any concert where he might have once competed—back in the day–with the artist for billing or played with any of the band members.  It’s like looking into a mirror of what might have been, but wasn’t.  And it’s hard on him.  It was because of this reason that when Chris Stapleton came to town, instead of going together, my husband bought me and one of my girlfriends a pair of tickets.

I subscribe to the philosophy that on the rare occasion I attend a concert or sporting event, it is worth having great seats.  For Chris Stapleton, we had tickets “in the pit,” which meant standing only, but right up by the stage.  It was chilly that early spring night, and I grabbed a jacket out of my husband’s closet before leaving the house.  It was way too long in the arms, and I looked like a gorilla.  This concert was the first big one I had been to since moving, and I wasn’t prepared for how extremely diverse the crowd in a suburban, yet metropolitan area in the south actually was.  The people-watching was fantastic!  There were Dockers-Dads who looked like they arrived directly from the office, country boys “rollin’ coal” in their lifted diesel trucks, patchouli smelling hippies with batik prints, beards and dreadlocks, and carefree college girls who had perfected accessorizing exposed cut-offs pockets with the cleft of their bottoms and cowboy boots.

My friend and I got drinks before elbowing our way up to the best standing spots.  I tipped the bartender to not open my second beer can, and I slipped it into the pocket of my oversized jacket to be consumed later without the hassle of getting back in line.  I remember walking into the scrum of concert-goers and wondering where I fit into this wonderful mix of people but coming up short in want of an answer.  I felt like a cross between a career-minded Docker Dad and a college girl who had finally acquiesced into a pair of shorts that fit.  But I knew I was neither.

As the concert went on, I finished my first drink and reached into the pocket of the jacket to open my second beer.  The night had gotten even chillier so I slipped my hand up inside the sleeve of my jacket to insulate it from the cold can of the Silver Bullet.  At this point, the opening chords of “Fire Away” could be heard, and the crowd and I started singing.  This time, I knew all the words, even the part about being a shelter for heartaches that don’t have a home.  I closed my eyes for a moment and, in spite of wearing a man’s windbreaker and rationing myself to two Coors Lights because I needed to drive home, I wistfully remembered the girl I once was.  I might be a working mom living in the suburbs, but I used to hustle pool, once intentionally wore a tube-top for a ride on a mechanical bull, and still had a scar from getting knocked in the forehead by an errant ceiling fan while dancing on the table of a basement bar in Bandera, Texas.

These guys in their golf shirts and the rednecks with over-leveraged and over-chromed pickup trucks would never know that.  They wouldn’t look at me and see a successful career woman, but they wouldn’t look at me and see a girl who loved climbing up in a big ol’ truck either.  In an odd way, it made me sad.  I guessed it was the kind of sad that my husband must feel in the event he goes to a concert and assesses himself as equally as talented as the headliner.  That feeling that, despite not being unhappy with current circumstances, given a different place in time, you could have been someone else.

The warm, loamy aroma of what the patchouli wearing hippies had smuggled into the concert started wafting up around me.  I watched in awe as, regardless of the differences among the folks in the pit, the devil’s lettuce was passed liberally among everyone.  It was at this moment, a girl (woman?) from the group who appeared to be my age tapped me on the shoulder.  She was wearing a flouncy tennis skirt with a Kate Spade cross-body bag, and I speculated that she drove a fully loaded mini-van tricked out with multiple car seats.  She slid up and yelled in my ear:  “Hey, I got something I think you could use!”

Oh my gosh, finally!  This fellow mom recognized me for who I was inside!  She could see how cool I used to be and was offering me to partake in some illegal drugs at a concert!  I was planning on turning her down—kindly of course!–but I was so grateful to no longer be wondering if and where I fit in.  I still had it.  People could tell.  And they wanted me to light up with them in the pit at a concert.

“Oh, yeah?” I yelled, with relief and a smile in my eyes.  “Whatcha got?”

She reached into her purse to pull out a small rectangular package which she placed into my hand that wasn’t pulled up inside a jacket sleeve.

“They’re handwarmers!”  She yelled.  “I bought them in bulk at Costco!”