fat city

I think I need to just sleep for about a week. My head feels like it’s stuffed with thick wool from ear to ear, and I have an ache in my back on one side. I think I pulled a muscle while coughing. I do realize that I am far from being the only person on the continent who is sick right now…but nonetheless, a cold can be a lonely place. Just me and my Kleenexes to keep me company. Occasionally Mia hops on the bed to sprawl out for a minute, fluff her tail at me, and let me know she cares.

I had a ticket to see Shawn Colvin at the Ryman last night, and that ticket is still tucked inside the pocket of my purse---eager, but a day too late. I just couldn’t muster the strength, as much as I wanted to go.

I saw her perform once, years ago in Houston. Mostly she’d just have been nostalgic last night, because I haven’t paid her music any attention until two weeks ago at the Tower Records pseudo-sale. But back in the day, all I seemed to listen to was Jonatha Brooke, Indigo Girls, Patty Griffin, and Shawn Colvin (with a little Ellis Paul thrown in for variety.)

Even the first few notes of “Fat City” can still take me back to the Fountainview apartments where Lisa and I lived. We always had music playing. At this time of year, Lisa would be getting the itch to carve a pumpkin, and I would be shopping for old cardigan sweaters at Savers for those one or two days when the temperature dipped below 80. We always used to say, “life will never be like this again,” and we were right. We meant it in a good way, that there was something very real and very “twenty-ish” about that time. Always a slew of friends around for impromptu potluck dinners, late nights of coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches, lots of road trips in Lisa’s Honda, and everyone we knew playing acoustic guitars. Well, maybe some things haven’t changed so much.

Who would have thought that so many of us (our friends) would end up in Nashville? Around the end of 1999, I guess we all grew tired of the Houston humidity and decided to begin the new century in a city with actual seasons. Most of us go back at least ten years, which is a third of our lives and the part that seems most important. Now we all know each other’s husbands and discuss scary things like mortgage rates and topics that never would have occurred to us ten years ago.

But then there are things like Shawn Colvin, following us to Tennessee to play us some songs for the memories. And occasionally we still meet for coffee too, only now it’s in the afternoon.