Have you ever looked at a picture that filled your heart with so much love that it made you catch your breath?  This is mine.  THIS is my boy.  THIS is his essence.  This is a moment that I want to hold forever in my memory.  My boy, at the last of our weekly coffee dates that we’ve held for four years.

The Spring has flown by, and my thoughts have been so disorganized that there has been no moment to write about everything going on.  I’m so caught up in my head that I’ve even found it hard to lose myself on a run.  I’m not enjoying myself, I’m just compiling another To Do List in my head.

It’s like this every year for the last few weeks of school, but it still catches me flat-footed.  I’ve told my son to just take it all in, and enjoy the last few weeks at our beloved elementary school.  But I haven’t taken my own advice.  We’re in triage mode, in “drink from the firehose” mode (my favorite saying from my friend Morgan).  We are in “check another event/meeting/party off the list” mode.

And today was possibly the one item on the list I’ve been dreading the most – the last time my soon-to-be middle schooler and I would go on our weekly coffee date, our standing one-on-one time that we’ve enjoyed for four years.  (“Oh, There is My Mind”).

It’s not a sad event.  But it’s a melancholy one.  Things are changing, and I believe you should acknowledge and appreciate the change as it happens.   So I knew it was on the calendar, and I ticked off a mental countdown of our remaining coffee dates as they winded down.

And then suddenly, today was here.  He bought his usual donut, and I had my usual latte.  We kept it light hearted.  We chatted about small stuff.  We wrote in the journal that we’ve kept this year.   All in all, I held it together pretty well.  I thought I would choke up with tears, but I didn’t.  That is, not until I dropped him off, watched him walk into school, and I turned on the car radio.  And there it was – “Alive”, by my band.  There is really no other song that could come on at that moment.  And as much as I’ve come to expect it at moments when I’m lost in my head….as much as I rely on the shuffle gods to bring music to me when I need it, I was still surprised.  I actually said so out loud – “REALLY?“

My song. Pearl Jam’s breakthrough single, “Alive”.  It’s spanned the last 20+ years of my life, as I’ve gone from college student to law student, to lawyer, to wife and mother.  (“Alive, Encore Break”). If I was younger and hipper, I might describe it my ‘jam’.  But I’m old and the song is too, so I’ve just grown to think of it as my theme song.  My anthem.  It shows up when I need it.

Of COURSE this is the song that comes on.  When I think now about the poignant times it has shown up in the past, the crises of those times seem very far away.  Just like this one will someday.  Then, as now, I embraced the changes and made it through.

So I suppose that if the (Pearl Jam) universe could answer my question in the car, that answer would be – “Yes, REALLY“.  It knew that I needed a little nudge to remind me that everything works out, and that as things change and life keeps moving forward, I’ll always have music to help me through.