320 Days Until the Big Five-0

Bruuuuuuuuce Part II

I have always been behind schedule on everything. I needed to go to summer school in order to finish college and get my degree. My “career” took so long to evolve I thought I was an amphibian. I spent more time being underemployed than I did being an undergrad. I knew I should have gone to graduate school, but that would have required some prompt action on my part. I married late. I had kids late in life. I did not move out of my childhood home/apartment building until my own child was a year old, making me 37 when I finally left home. But as the saying goes, “time waits for no one.” It marched on and I trailed along behind listening to Bruce Springsteen the whole way from High School to college to trolling bars on Rush Street, to lonely nights and bad blind dates to wedded bliss and baby blues.

Just last June we celebrated my son’s Bar Mitzvah. It is traditional (if you were born after 1980) to show a Video Montage of the Bar Mitzvah Boy, his family and friends all set to music. It is a mini movie production adventure. I loved picking out the music to go with the pictures. It started with “Glory Days”. I had to put a Bruce song in there. The party featured even more Bruce music. When the Disc Jockey put on “Dancing In the Dark” I wheeled my 90 year old mother out on the dance floor while my girl friends and I surrounded her. She clapped and Bruce sang as we took turns twirling her around in her wheel chair . After all, we had gotten her to the Promised Land. On the day my son was born I looked at my mother who, only 78 back then, was still able to get around using a walker even though her face had more lines than a Texaco Road Map. She laughed and said from “your mouth to G=d’s ears”. Thirteen years later, I am strutting in front of my mom, who is now physically confined to a wheel chair, yet smiling and filled with joy. It was obvious she was being lifted up spiritually just like the thousands of fans at your average Bruce concert. See, I knew the good Lord was a Springsteen fan! He did hear me that day my son was born! He must have known what music I would be playing at the Bar Mitzvah.