Solo

Sophistication is overrated.  You can have your luxury car.  Jeeps rule.  You can savor your artisanal coffee.  I’m good with water.  Save your complicated schemes for someone else.  I’m fine with a few simple rules.  One of which is to never walk past a neighborhood lemonade stand, Cub Scout selling popcorn or Girl Scout selling cookies without buying. 

My earliest adventure in capitalism involved a lemonade stand on Clark Street in Chicago.  The only person who bought a cup was a sailor.  I’ve rooted for the midshipmen in every Army – Navy game since.  My later excursions into the free market were of the import – export variety.  Fireworks were illegal in Illinois, but not Missouri.  The Pinto Cruising Wagon was never cooler (nor more deadly) than hauling back a load of ordinance to the soon to be cash-strapped and hearing-impaired fellow students of Grayslake High.  Remember, you didn't buy them from me.

So as we walk out of Lowes with a few bolts to finish up the latest episode of Bad Ideas In The Garage, Colin doesn’t even slow down at the Girl Scout cookie table. He knows the fix is in, and I’ll be reducing the Quad Cities Strategic Reserve of Thin Mints by two boxes.  Back at the garage, the fifteen horse four stroke is torqued down to the urban camo painted plywood frame of the “can you believe I don’t have a mechanical engineering degree?” ski winch.  The snow is a little sparse so we take a few test runs down the street on roller blades.  It’s somewhere between sufficiently fast and “think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?”.  Wile E. Coyote would be proud.  

I try not to be proud.  I try to be grateful.  It’s not a perfect science, and the kids screw it up fairly regularly.  Back for the weekend, it’s easy to be grateful for the family, and it’s hard not to be proud of Colin and Amanda.  Of the handful of things I’ve done right, putting musical instruments in their hands at the first opportunity is near the top.  They’re both talented musicians, and that creative talent transfers to most everything they do.  I’m back this weekend, specifically, for an ISU Campus Band concert.  That’s a surprise for Amanda, which goes well.  She has a solo in the concert, which I wouldn’t miss for the world.

That daily diary of sophistication known as the New York Times publishes a good op-ed (here) about acquainting girls with risk and fear on the same day of Amanda’s solo.  The op-ed comes one day after the easy mark cookie purchase at Lowes, and I can’t help but draw the connections between the op-ed, the thin mints and the solo.  Amanda’s scouting experiences – from Brownie to Gold Award to Camp Counselor – helped shape her to be the strong, confident young woman she is today. 

The concert hall is packed.  The band is moving through a composition called "Heaven's Light" (available here) and it’s time for her to hit her marks. 

I’m no sophisticate, but it sounds perfect to me, and another lovely moment gets filed away for memory.  It’s near impossible not to be proud, as near impossible as it is to walk past a cookie stand and not see Amanda in memory there.  If you pay just the smallest bit of attention, none of us are really solo.

Life’s simple.  Be grateful.  Take risks.  Buy the cookies.