{"id":6828,"date":"2018-03-17T14:41:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T21:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alicecarbone.com\/?p=6828"},"modified":"2020-04-14T12:55:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T19:55:03","slug":"just-moment-real-tom-petty-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alicecarbone.com\/staging\/2381\/just-moment-real-tom-petty-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"For Just A Moment It Was All So Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1<\/em><\/p>\n

As I left the 101 South at Van Nuys, on Wednesday March 6th<\/sup>, at 11:30 am, local radio 88.5 played Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers\u2019 Out In The Cold. I was headed to the Van Nuys County Registrar Office to get Catherine\u2019s birth certificate (I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been 90 days since her birth).<\/p>\n

Everything had seemed normal that morning: I was tired, in a hurry, Catherine had spit on my blouse, and I had used dry shampoo on my hair two days in a row. I wasn\u2019t thinking about this essay, but of one about self-care that had nothing to do with the song 88.5<\/a> played at 11:30 am.<\/p>\n

Since Tom has passed, I haven\u2019t been able to listen to any of his songs, neither with The Heartbreakers<\/a> or Mudcrutch<\/a>. I can\u2019t listen to his voice on radio without crying, and Eddie Vedder\u2019s performance at this year\u2019s Academy Awards made it clear to me: his departure still hurt as if it had happened yesterday.<\/p>\n

What had not seemed normal, that morning, had been my reaction to Tom\u2019s voice: I had been able to listen to the entire song without tears. But I wasn\u2019t happy about it. All of a sudden, in fact, a dark cloud heavy with sadness covered the sky; I was scared.<\/p>\n

The song ended when the light at the Van Nuys exit turned red. By the side of the street, I noticed the same old homeless man I had seen there a few days before; he was dressed in rags, but his eyes, unlike mine, seemed to be serene. With my hand, I motioned him toward my car and gave him the only change I had in my purse, $2. \u201cGod bless you,\u201d he said. \u201cHave a beautiful day,\u201d I responded with a smile on my face. Then I turned left onto Van Nuys Boulevard.<\/p>\n

Z Berg\u2019s I Fall For The Same Face played, followed by The Who\u2019s Getting In Tune.<\/p>\n

That dark cloud heavy with sadness began pouring rain on me. I cried.<\/p>\n

As I drove along the boulevard, I noticed a green wave of traffic lights in the far distance, then all reds. The lights changed so fast that I wasn\u2019t able to see the yellow. Things in life change so fast that I can seldom see the middle ground, the place for slowing down, like the yellow traffic light, or the place for patience and acceptance, the place I often find myself underestimating, complaining about, fighting, and missing out on.<\/p>\n

Part 2<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThese are becoming loose,\u201d I thought the other day of my maternity jeans. At three months postpartum, I am at that stage when my pregnancy clothes are large, and when I begin to slowly fit back into my old ones.<\/p>\n

I opened the fridge and took out some leftover pasta from the night before.<\/p>\n

I thought I would be euphoric at the feeling of loose fabric around my waist, but a sense of loss and fear hovered over me instead, a feeling that very much resembled that cloud on Van Nuys Boulevard.<\/p>\n

As I sat down to eat my lunch, I looked at photographs of newborn Catherine at the hospital. \u201cI still have the hospital pads in the bathroom,\u201d I remembered. In fact, both the sanitary pads and the mesh underwear I had been given at Cedar\u2019s Sinai were still on the toilet, where I had put them the day we had returned home as parents. I didn\u2019t lack the time to throw them away, or to at least store them in the cabinet beneath the sink; I had decided to keep them there, where I could see them, almost as if I were to use them again soon, or rather, as if by seeing them every day I could bring back time.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t bring back time. Things change, and they change fast.<\/p>\n

They change as fast as the traffic lights on Van Nuys Boulevard; they change so drastically that I am not in touch with the change until life forces me to pause, and to look back. Time has passed; some have left, some have arrived. Time has passed; some things have gotten better, others have gotten worse. Someone has gotten sick, someone\u2019s found new health and hope.<\/p>\n

Part 3<\/em><\/p>\n

What will happen when I\u2019ll be able to listen to every song of Tom\u2019s, and enjoy it? Will I still miss him? Will I still remember the tours, the challenges and the magic moments, the laughs, the stage, the plane, our flight attendant Cynthia, Cliff, pilot Bill, and the rest of our family on the road? Are those who pass forever gone, once we get used to them missing? Is it then, when they really die? Can I keep them alive, or will they become just another traffic light that goes from green to red?<\/p>\n

Who will I be without my pregnant body? Will I remember the nausea, the discomfort, the fear, but also the joy, the excitement, and the healing? What will happen when I\u2019ll put away those jeans for good? Catherine is growing. I am getting older.<\/p>\n

\"realPutting away the hospital pads, the pregnancy jeans, and listening to Tom, scares me because I am afraid I will lose the last life I hold of them in my heart. I am scared I will lose the very moment we found out I was pregnant, the first time she moved in my womb, during Learning to Fly at Wrigley Field, in Chicago. Patty and Dana were there with me, side stage right, behind Greg Looper at the mixer. Ben was on the other side of the stage, so I sent him a message through John Bunker, his piano tech.<\/p>\n

Who am I without pregnancy? What is life without the band on stage? I remember asking a similar question when I had gotten sober: who was I without the old self-destructive darkness? In those days, my eating disorder was the last link to that Alice. Today, the maternity clothes are my last link to the pregnancy and to life in two \u2014 the sorrow I feel when I listen to Tom\u2019s voice the last life I have of him.<\/p>\n

Will I still miss him? Will I still remember Catherine in my womb?<\/p>\n

We are approaching the end of this essay, and I think I\u2019ve found a possible answer. And it is yes, I will.<\/p>\n

Catherine is my bond to her creation, to the soft curves of my pregnant body, and to the woman I was before giving birth. And Tom\u2019s music and voice is the bond with his life, a life that will never die. Like energy, nothing disappears. Like energy, memories can\u2019t be destroyed.<\/p>\n

I guess the secret is to trust we will always remember, and to allow memories to visit us when we are open to them, when we need them, when they do good, and not harm. I guess the secret is to savor this very moment without too much thinking, and as Ben\u2019s favorite band sings\u2026let it be.<\/p>\n

I just listened to Southern Accents. And I cried.<\/p>\n