I've posted this before, sorry about that but a friend of mine wanted to read it again. This happened to me a few years ago.
I was on a business trip in Houston a few years ago and had the opportunity to see a state of the art lab instrument with hopes of buying one for my lab. However that meant I would have to extend my trip almost 2 extra days, and it was two weeks before Christmas, I missed my family badly, and had not even decorated my house or shopped. All of my friends and colleagues had left at the end of our meetings and that meant I had to eat alone, kill time alone, finish paperwork alone, and I hated that. Our meeting had been at the Hyatt downtown, which was immaculately decorated but that only added to my feeling that I need to be home rather than a dedicated lab manager.
After phoning home on my last night there, I walked out to the lobby and sat down with a list of restaurants, bent on picking out somewhere nice to at least treat myself and make the evening a little more enjoyable. My daughters had broken my heart on the phone earlier, as they were upset that I would be coming home so late in the week and that did not enhance my mood. There was a elaborately decorated stage in the lobby with several Christmas trees and a grand piano in the center. I sat by it with a chip on my shoulder and mauling over all these things. Why did I have to decide to stay over and be away from my family that much more? How can I make it up to my daughters? Why the hell couldn’t I have just looked at this instrument online, as it might not even work for me anyway? And what the hell does this hoodlum think he’s doing at the piano?
A very tall kid in a black basketball shoes, black sweatpants, and a black hoodie which kept he had pulled over his head walked on the stage and sat down at the piano. I thought he might be an area college basketball player and he had more the manner of some punk on the street than a musician. He sat there few nearly two minutes, just looking around. He had no sheet music and in my mind no business in the middle of this display. I watch, looking around to see if anyone with the Hyatt would approach him. He then began to play music that I knew very well. It was Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and he was playing it verbatim! I was almost impossible to tell the difference from the CD as he played the jazz pieces so beautifully. I sat there listening to this kid playing and tears rolled down my face. It would not have mattered if I was in a shopping mall holding my daughters’ hands, this was incredible to hear. A crowd of a few people gathered and people would come and go, some stopping and enjoying, and most hurried by, but I marveled as he played that entire CD which is my favorite holiday music. I watched his hands as they stroked the keys with the precision of a surgeon, coaxing notes and chords into an alignment that would have reached down into the deepest soul and brought out handfuls of illumination. Now reports, lab instruments, and dinner were all vanished to where they should have been in the first place and my homesickness was put in better perspective. Sometimes you just have to adjust the blinders that keep your mind’s eyes focused on critical issues and allow yourself to see more important ones, like how much beauty there is, everywhere, anywhere.
I think of that scene often this time of year. I have a big and close-knit family and together we have built so many memories through the years, but that is one of my fondest holiday memories. I don’t look at my daughters’ friends as brainless idiots in need of a belt, but as individuals with a gift of free expression and the potential for greatness, as all people should strive to be. Maybe someday I’ll lighten up and bend my rule about my daughters not leaving the house with a boy who doesn’t respect me enough to remove his ball cap in my house…but I doubt it.
