Closer I Am to Fine
Four years ago, I was counting down the days to see my all-time favorite duo in the smallest venue I’d ever see them in, in a frenzied crowd of long-time followers in town to celebrate love, music, joy, and all good things as a community.
The wait to find out if the concert was canceled because of COVID-19 was interminable. No one knew what to do, about most things. The news. The government. The world. Everyone was alert and aware. Everyone was scared. No one knew what was coming, really—the fear, the long-lasting effects to people and economies, the overwhelming grief from human lives extinguished and losses of all kinds (mostly time). No one knew what the pandemic experience would be. It took a while for it all to sink in.
Finally, the sad email arrived: the pandemic forced the cancellation of the Women’s FEST show with the Indigo Girls. No show. No fun.
Fast forward four years (though it feels like much longer sometimes), the Girls are still on my YouTube and Spotify, on repeat. They’re still my favorite. At this point, I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again. They’re touring but never seem to be near me. And I don’t go as many places as I used to. For them, though, I’d risk a crowd.
Yes, it’s a risk still for me and people I know. I still wear a mask indoors and in crowds, protection for people whose immune systems can’t fully protect themselves. I’d risk it for one last dance with the Girls, who probably are going to hang it up one day. Soon? Maybe not? Who knows?
That’s the thing we definitely learned through these four years—no one knows, ever. It’s all up in the air. We just think we have a handle on things.
You know, I’ve been singing “Closer to Fine” for 35 years (and so have the Girls!). And I’ve known what the song meant forever. But with every year that passes, especially those that were curtailed by a hopefully once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, I understand it more and more. The less I seek my source for some definitive, closer I am to fine. I don’t have to look out there for anything, as long as I know what’s going on inside me.
What’s going on inside this month is: it’s my birthday month and I’m happy and I’m sad. See, my birthday was also my father’s birthday. And my father died 25 years ago. No one tells you when your dad bakes you a cake shaped like a bunny because your 11th birthday falls on Easter that one day that particular memory will make you cry while you smile. Forever. Even still, every piece of cake tastes bittersweet.
It’s a curse and gift to see the endings in beginnings, to know the full circle of something before it starts. I may not know the ins and outs but I know the way things go, because that’s the way things go. Like having tickets in your hand that you can never use that now remind you of that time you could have gotten oh, so close, and yet it’s so far, and they may never come this way again.
Oh, sweet melancholy. Give it a rest. Remember this gem of a line, written by Emily Saliers: darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear. Ain’t that the truth? Well, sometimes, anyway (you know, like right now).
Guess it’s all just part of walking the crooked line Emily and Amy Ray sing about in that now classic song. Brief aside: when did everybody get old? And it’s all part of life, the crying while smiling thing, which I suppose is better than just crying alone.
I know the Girls say I’ll be closer to fine if I don’t look outside myself, that what I need is within me. I know that’s true. But I also know a piece of cake wouldn’t hurt. It is my birthday month after all. (Yes, month. All month. Thirty Days of Celebrating Me.)
Perhaps I’ll bake a cake shaped like a bunny, enhanced by special ingredients—a smile and a few tears. A cake for me and dad, the man who heard “Closer to Fine” thousands of times, a little muffled, through the ceiling, shaking the hanging dining room light as the music thumped for hours.
He never did tell me to turn it down. The best thing [he] ever did for me is to help me take my life less seriously—it’s only life after all.
Happy birthday to us. ▼
Freelance writer Tara Lynn Johnson doesn’t look her age (and no, she won’t tell you). Visit her at taralynnjohnson.com.