Last night I stood in the middle of a dance floor amongst faddish 20 somethings. They bobbed their fashionable heads to the growlings of the music. The guys in the heavy metal band screamed, pounded their instruments and threw their heads back and forth. I watched in horrified fascination. Then it happened.....they dedicated a song to me. Right in the center of the dangerous sounding cadence of their angst, the notes changed and a heart-rending, tear jerking poem-song was emitted from my son's guitar. I have never felt so honored.
His whole life with me seemed to have led to that moment-- the years in which we were too poor to afford to get him guitar lessons, and his determination to learn to play despit this. He was asked not to listen to heavy rock because of the stance of my church, but he somehow learned and absorbed it anyway-as if he was born to play overly-emotional music the way I was born to teach and draw. Even though his sound is usually one that does not appeal to me, last night I grew to understand his passion better and his inability to escape his talent any more than I can, or would want to.
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