Surprise, surprise!

Remember the surprise that was happening yesterday?

Me too.

After gospel choir he picks me up and we kiss because we love each other a lot. I put on the iPod, he drives. We bypass the game traffic and soon, we’re on a foggy road that feels like it’s suspended in midair—I love this road, because, we went on part of our honeymoon to the place it leads to.

“Park City!” I shout.

This surprise is my 8-month-early birthday present.

YEah.

We wind up the road and wind up at Park City High school, where we take a bus that is free to a part of Main Street I’ve never seen before. The cold is biting my face and feet off but I’m giddy and 14. Or 5.

I really, really love surprises.

Especially ones as well kept as this one.

But we’ve brought my expired license (agh!) and get to ride the bus back to our car and get my paper one that’s real and come back to wait in line.

It’s just starting to dawn on me that I need to be 21 to go into this place and there are sketchy peeps creepin all around, smoking and swearing.

I’m still 14 slash 5 though, so I don’t mind. Jared makes me take off my glasses so I can’t see the posters as we approach. The guy ID-ing me asks me all this questions because he thinks my picture doesn’t look like me. Silly man!

I realize: this is a bar.

 

We get up to the front (YES, THE FRONT. JUST REMEMBER THAT WE ARE IN THE FRONT ABOUT TO SEE SOMETHING THAT I LOVE EXTREMELY DEARLY) and stare at the empty stage to wait. 10 minutes, 20 minutes.

A girl behind me shouts out the name of my surprise: “I just can’t believe I’m here,” she gushes, “seeing LAURYN HILL!”

asdfjasfjdalfjd are you kidding me is this for realnoitcan’t be i just adfjajdiwi? i just screamed and shouted and thrust myself into jared’s arms and then i prompty burst into tears.

Those people didn’t care because they were already drunk, drunk, drunk.

See, Lauryn Hill is my favorite artist in ALL of time and space, tied with Aretha Franklin. Possibly a titch ahead.

FAVORITE. Okay so I guessed it was a concert and I was trying to think of anyone and everyone it could possibly be but not once did this lady cross my mind—maybe because, oh, she hasn’t come out with new music in like 10 years and she’s dropped off the face of the music planet.

BUT SHE WAS THERE LAST NIGHT. IN THAT BAR. AND SO WAS I.

Well, she wasn’t there for a while.

Three hours, to be exact. Three hours of standing in the squished crowd and enduring the security guard who was at least 7 feet tall and whose ponytail kept whipping me in the face. Also I was forced to touch his bum more times than I would like to count. Three hours of watching people whose lives I know absolutely nothing about drink themselves slamming drunk, plaster themselves all over any other person they could find. Three hours of waitresses in the most ridiculous getups waddle (it’s the only means of transportation when your skirt is skin tight and your heels are a hundred inches high) back and forth with shots of STUFF. Three hours of asking the security man, PLEASE WHEN DOES IT START? he had no idea every single time.

But after those three hours, SHE WAS THERE. In this ludicrous fur coat and seventy other layers and twenty five bangles on each arm and gargantuan earrings and Native American makeup. She was there! And she SANG! And she was amazing.

It was so amazing. I wanted more singing from her and less noise from the band and drunk folks but I just sat there with my mouth hanging open and didn’t even sing along.

See, I can describe what happened up until then. But when she started singing I just have to stop because I can’t put words to it other than AMAZING.

It was amazing.

 

We arrive home at three in the morning and I missed a bit of class but srsly? Once in a lifetime thing here. And that man, that beautiful, gorgeous man who made it happen? Well, dontcha know, he’s my husband. And we are married to each other and it is incredible because that’s who he is.

Gosh. What an adventure for a random Wednesday night in January.

I love Lauryn Hill.

I love my husband for taking me to her.

WHAAAAT is my life? Wonderful.

still fighting it.

How did I ever get by? Leaning into the wind, letting life take me where it wished? Now I feel this incredible sense of HUGEness—a strength. Not a bitter, battling the-world-is-out-to-get-me, but a simple knowledge that I will not be that person again. I will not be wishy-washy again.

I know what I want out of this life partially because I feel divinely encouraged…even commanded. Hey, Brooke: thou shalt not hide.

Letting myself be known means fighting against the natural current that would push me aside, leave a flaky facade devoid of soul. (And we know how I feel about that.)

The fighting mentality comes out unnecessarily, despite effort to let it be when that’s the right answer.

……………………………………………………………

December 15, 2010

I went through all this trouble to find a pen, tonight, so, this better be good.

My how I overuse commas.

Maybe I’m afraid to write what I want to say tonight. I think, I will get over it. I think I will get over it. I probably will.

So what’s the point of writing it down, giving a name to the faceless monster?

It does feel good to write again, to feel my hand cramp up again. It’s like, Natalie Goldberg says, meeting a very old, pleasant friend. Sometimes she is crinkled and lined and very old for real. Mostly, though, she’s slippery and mysterious and without form. Does she sing, dance? I only picture her simply existing. Taking up space, but with purpose. She still walks and runs and rollumps.

Rollumps. Wow.

It’s been far too long since I have let myself get lost in paper and ink. Far too long, even, since I have let myself get lost in iPod music, regular music, Brooke music—not drilling classical into my sullied brains for [an apparently insufficient number of] hours.

Why are there always slits of complete insanity in your otherwise perfectly fabricated, sewed-up life? They keep rearing their heads, teasing, taunting scratching at the door as if to say, Look what I can do!

Slits of complete insanity.

………………………………………………………………………………

People are so good at helping other people.

Just look here and you will know.

I sent one nice man an email and he posted it on his famous blog! I love him forever for this! He is my hero and I will kiss his feet if I ever meet him. Bob, you are an angel. You made me gasp out in a grateful cry because through this little thing you did for me I knew God was watching over my efforts to spread His love.

Wow.