When Painted Wings and Giant Rings ... and Swing Sets ... Give Way

I noticed you were gone right away.

Although it was dark when we pulled into the drive way, you were immediately conspicuous in your absence.

“Look there, Doodle” I said to the girl who prompted your very existence in our lives.

“Nooooo!” she cried. “How could Dad do this while I was gone? I didn’t even get a picture.”

(That tendency to the dramatic and to hoarding would be the Roberts and the Morey in her.)

Fourteen years ago, the same girl – then a curly-headed toddler - sat in a child-sized chair eating grapes as her dad reconstructed you in your new home.

Fourteen and a half years ago, you –  a broken down version of yourself - made the move from suburban life to a farm home.

Nearly 15 years ago, you were a hotly debated point in negotiations of a home sale.

Sixteen years ago, you were lifted over a fence as a gift from neighbors we didn’t really know but whose own children no longer needed you.

Before that?

Well, who really knows for sure? You’d been a hand-me-down even to the unknown neighbors.

What I do know is this:

Your value can never truly be measured. The hours of enjoyment you provided over the years are nothing short of countless.  The children who climbed you, swung on you and leaped from  you with peals of laughter number in the dozens. 

Your demise marks a turning point in our lives.  Your little curly-headed girl graduates high school in just days. Your absence now in our backyard is a harbinger of the hole in our lives coming soon when that girl goes to college, never to ever truly return home again.

Your life has paralleled our own for years. Yard toys have given way to car keys and high heels. While your journey is done, ours is not … but it won’t ever be the same.

Your job here is done.  God speed, old friend. 

Luck o the Barbs

Who needs the luck of the Irish when you are a Marching Barb or a DHS Band Fan?

We got out ahead of the snow.  We missed the shoveling and the cold back home.  We only hope our friends and families have that all sorted out and cleaned up by the time we return.

The corresponding Delta flight from JFK that the companions enjoyed on Sunday didn’t make it out on Monday. And, those travelers are surely just flat out of luck.  There is likely no finding empty seats on a later flight to Ireland the week of Saint Patrick’s Day.

Damp and chilly and overcast often best describes Ireland in March.

But not when the Barbs are in country. We’ve enjoyed stunningly beautiful weather in truly lovely settings. 

Now, the forecast is clearing a bit for Belfast. Without such improvements, today’s performance may not happen.  Our Marching Barbs will only perform weather permitting.

The sun is now peeking through the clouds, dappling some of the Northern Ireland countryside.

Let’s hope it keeps up.  Let’s hope it carries on though the parade in Dublin.

Barb Pride.

Barb Luck.

Weather Leprechauns.

Band Parents and the Laws of Physics....

I can’t help but wonder… Did Sir Isaac Newton know a band parent?

Most of us are familiar with Newton’s famous law that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. Well, that’s certainly a way of life for band parents, especially our chaperone friends.  These part-time nurses, often-time drill sergeants, occasional seamstresses, periodic counselors, impromptu tour guides and full-time boosters of kids and music are performing a yeoman’s service - honest, hard work – here on the Marching Barbs’ Epic Ireland Adventure. And, they paid for the honor to do so. They have no room to contemplate Newton’s concept of inertia. There simply is no time to for them to pause.

Be sure to make the time to thank them for their service when they return.

Then, again, perhaps Newton didn’t know any Band Parents at all.

After all, that famous first law says the path of motion is usually fairly straight forward, with progression more or less at a constant speed. Neither a simple path nor a measured cadence are luxuries that most band parents can afford. 

Band parents plan and re-plan. They zig. They zag. Band Parents charge ahead when needed or attempt to calm the waters when required. They watch. They jump in. They mind the gap. They fill the needs, whatever ever ones they see. They cheer. They support.

But…. What they don’t do?

They. Don’t. Ever. Stop.

There is nothing in Newton’s First Law of Motion that really hints at why band parents don’t stop.

But …. If you don’t know, I’ll share a secret.  For any of them like me, it’s simply because they can’t. 

A place to go….

A need to address…

A schedule to keep….

A question to answer.

A photograph to take. 

There’s a reason I am always taking photos and am never in them. If I stop, you’ll see the emotion I can barely keep contained. 

That emotion is there, just below the surface, ready to erupt, usually when I least want it to. 

I can’t contain it when it’s wheels up at O’hare. It leaks out from the corner of my eyes as the Irish countryside first becomes visible out the airplane’s window. It constricts my throat as 100 green-clad children on the cusp of adulthood begin to form a concert arc in a setting most never imagined playing in front of the first time they picked up an instrument.  It snatches my breath as the drum major makes the call and that first note rends the air.

Barb Pride.  Band mom emotions.

Pausing now is not an option.