Don't Need Your Civil War

I can taste sweet freedom on the horizon. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy being a musician, getting exercise and making extra cash on the weekends. But every year around this time, I start thinking it might not be so bad having nothing to do on a Saturday or Sunday, and start counting the gigs until I have my weekends free again. Tonight was supposed to be a simple job, a parade for a fire department. While feast processions with my Italian bands are generally several hours, parades consist of walking for a mile or two from one point to another. The longest thing about parades is the waiting. Depending on the division we're in, we could be at the beginning or end of the parade, or somewhere in between. The bigger the parade and the further back we are, the longer the wait.

Tonight was a last-minute request that my dad agreed to earlier this week. I came home from work and when he asked, “You're not doing anything on Saturday, right?”, I knew we were already booked. I wasn't doing anything, so I decided I might as well make some extra cash to support my expensive habits, like watching DVDs or playing video games or, you know, driving. Going anywhere with my dad is a stressful affair since he's obsessed with getting places early, and days in advance I have to listen to: “So we're going to leave here at 3 on Saturday, right? 3? Hello? Did you hear me? Well why didn't you answer? What? I'm just asking a question. Boy, you can't talk to this kid...”

Now that my dad is getting older, he's discovering new and unique ways to increase stress prior to a job. Today I heard him exclaim an oddly muffled “Ohhhh no! Ohhh boy--!” and come running out of the bathroom. In lieu of floss, since he has trouble with it and few of his teeth are still originals, he uses these little plastic sticks with bristles on the end of them. They're pretty thick, so I doubt they're meant to go between teeth. Yet there he stood with his mouth agape in the hallway, a piece of plastic wedged between two teeth in the bottom row, his lower lip dripping saliva on the floor. “Whag oo ay oo?!” he asked, as I raced to put some paper towels on the floor and ushered him back into the bathroom. Before I could stop him, he impatiently yanked it free with a sickening snap that I hoped was just the plastic. Later, as we drove to our destination, he idly mused that he hoped his teeth weren't broken. I asked him if they hurt and he said no, so that was a good sign.

Emergency aside, we arrived on time and proceeded to wait nearly two hours before it was our turn to march. Though we were told it would be short, the route was over two miles so neither distance nor time were lacking. As we neared the reviewing stand, a crowd of people who'd driven their cars up onto a patch of grass were drinking beers, cheering, and holding up signs. The messages from our “fans” ranged from “Baby got back” to “take off your shirt” to “Get a life” to “Let's get it on”. I admit to sensing some mixed signals.

Life is full of struggles, and we sometimes wrestle with being where we want to be versus being where we need to be. Still, I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and, despite my legendary luck, I don't think it's a train. I have another procession tomorrow, and two more parades in a few weeks for Columbus Day weekend, and I'm more or less free for a few months with the possible exception of one holiday parade. I did get a call for a job on October 1st, but I had to turn it down because it conflicted with someone's wedding. If they weren't at the exact same time I might have been able to fit both in, but even as I considered it a moment of clarity hit me like a ton of bricks: It's not going to kill me to take a day off for something more important and fun.

It's nice to recognize when there's a freedom of choice. As I watched the Odyssey-like Civil War epic Cold Mountain this morning, I marveled at the determination of Jude Law's character to survive, and reunite with his true love, played by Nicole Kidman. At one point in the film, he asks a blind man what he would do for ten minutes of sight. The blind man says he wouldn't want it, because it would be cruel to go back to being blind again. His stance was that having a thing and losing it was worse than never having it at all, but Law countered that some things were worth fighting for, no matter how brief. Without some conflict, we might never get what we want.

One thing the film showed was how brutal life was back then, how tragic it was for countrymen to be at each other's throats. I look at politics today, a subject I rarely touch, and I pray we're not heading down that road again. Admittedly, I never paid much attention to the news, especially as a child, so that may be why things seem so different to me now. Did conservatives hate Carter as much as we hated Clinton? I remember Reagan being a beloved figure, not reviled by liberals as our current president is. Realize, as I do, that this is a gross oversimplification that doesn't take into account specific events from their respective term. Maybe the personal attacks and dissatisfaction existed during the presidents of my youth, and I just wasn't paying attention. It's never going to be possible to please all the people all the time, and we have a pretty good system in which every four to eight years, it's some other group's turn to be pleased or unhappy. Still, the tensions seem high and the reds and blues on the map point to a marked division in this nation.

When I take into account the struggles people are facing in this world, and the endurance our ancestors needed to simply survive, I know I can march a few more steps and tough it out. Sometimes I just need to step back, gain perspective, and recognize how trivial my “problems” truly are in the grand scheme of history and the world.