It's been said that music soothes the savage beast. In the cartoons or old movies the hero would play a lullaby to put the beast or monster to sleep. To me the original saying is right, but the meaning to it is that the beast becomes more deadly.
This year has been an emotional roller-coaster of jubilant joys and flummoxing financial failings. The fertile spring brought our friends and families numerous newborns. The summer brought vacation travel and rounds of lay-offs at not only my company, but also Megan's. We tried to accomplish a simple rate-reduction modification with our mortgage company and got a 4 month jerk-along with a final offer of over $10,000 just to save us a lousy percent on our note. Then came a debilitating $6,000 assessment from our Condo Association so that our roof doesn't collapse in on us. All in all the year has flown by us in a whirlwind of emotional speed.
In the midst of all this mayhem, come birthdays. Megan's birthday for the last few years has been a month-long gala celebration for me. It's a time when I gift her randomly on days leading up to her birthday with little gifts here and there, culminating in one usually really good present on the actual day thereof. In addition, I usually take the lady to a nice meal at a favorite restaurant, something on par with or even at The Melting Pot. This year, in the hub-bub of our vacation, I fell down on my duty. We went out for a nice meal at one point and I got her a gifty here and there, but it wasn't the concerted effort I can usually offer at that, most auspicious, time of year.
Given this, in the lead-up to my birthday when Megan would ask I'd just say "I don't need anything, really, don't worry about it especially since I failed you on your birthday." Much like when I wax poetic about a zombie movie, she didn't listen. The day rolls around and she made the famed Oreo Ice Cream cake (a home-made ice cream cake to which I finally did say "oooh if you HAVE to do something I'll take one of those") and hands me a present.
"What's this?"
"I told you I got you a little something."
"Yeah, you mentioned something about that but I told you really not to worry about it since I screwed up with your birthday this year."
While she assured me she was happy with her birthday and I plotted mentally to make up for it at Christmas, I opened the gift to find a set of mix cd's inside. I had been driving around with the same dozen cd's in my car for about a year and the salvation to this mind-numbing rut had just been delivered with a bow on it! The three discs were broken up into 2 categories. 2 of the discs were just mixes of cool songs she knew I liked and the final disk was primarily love songs and smooth songs.
The coolness of her thoughtful gift truly hit me the next week on my commute to work. As a background, for me, every time I leave our condo it's like entering one of Dante's previously unchronicled levels of hell. The absolute crush of humanity I encounter daily in a city as big as Chicago tends to unnerve me on a primal level. Whether it's dodging cyclists on the sidewalk or the street, dodging motorists on the sidewalk or the street, or wading through the masses at the deli counter at the store, I'm always some shade of edgy living here. My commute typically feels like a frenzied battle for dominance. So when I hit the road this Monday to the smooth stylings of Van Morrison, Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone, how could I have imagined the transformation my commute would become? Usually my stabs at traffic were the wild chops of a malarial-fevered Congo guide; frenzied, impatient, and borderline insane. That day with the pleas of One More Moondance and just a Simple Kiss to Build a Dream on, my traffic foray became the calm strokes of a top-notch board-certified surgeon; relaxed, precise and efficient.
Megan has given me a melodic center on which to cling. The beast is soothed on his daily travels. Though soothed, this beast does not sleep, he's merely more focused so beware A-holes that try to merge from the breakdown lane 2 miles after the signs warn you, I'm still not letting you over, I'll just do so with a relaxed smile on my face.
