Last Monday Laura and I went out to Ravinia. I highly recommend spending a summer evening out there. There are few things in the Chicago area that are as intrinsically pleasant. Even if you can’t find a concert you are 100% excited about, the atmosphere makes it a great way to spend the evening.
We went to see Indigo Girls. Laura had never seen them. I had seen them twice previously. It wasn’t until we were there that I realized the last time I saw them was on the Lilith Fair tour in 1997. Which puts it at 10 years ago.
Something about it being a decade really struck me. How much of my life was vastly different than it was in 1997. How in many ways I don’t feel all that much different, but in most others 21 seems so very foreign to me.
I’m married now. I’ve taught kids who are now older than I was the last time I saw them in concert. Summer’s don’t mean the same thing they did then. I’m a teacher so I have the time off work, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Summer is no longer SUMMER, though I guess it hasn’t been for a long time.
But then I got up and walked around. It was about 75 degrees outside, not a cloud in the sky. The slightest breeze in the air. I caught my shadow on the ground cast from the intermittent street lights lined up along the path, and for one brief moment, it 1997. I was 21 and it was SUMMER.
God, that felt good. To have summer back in that way, for just a moment, put a smile on my face for the rest of the night. I even heard a few songs I knew by heart.
