The jukebox of my life is filled principally with Bruce Springsteen's music. Not exclusively, mind you, because space is taken by, among others, John Hiatt, Elvis Costello, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, Joe Jackson, Tears for Fears, Mark Knopfler, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Johnny Cash, and the criminally underappreciated and never more relevant James McMurtry.
I am a man born and raised in New Jersey. It is here I have lived the entirety of my life, except for the four years I was a shuffling Buffalo in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. I shall likely live here until I die seeing as I have never possessed any desire to live anywhere else. I am not simply from here. I am here.
For forty-plus years, I have ardently enjoyed the music of Bruce Springsteen, for which I owe a debt of gratitude to my big brother, Bill. He is the one who introduced Springsteen's music to me. I honored his gift by paying it forward to my son, Rob. I have been fortunate to see Springsteen perform live upwards of one hundred times. Among my favorite shows? The first two Rob ever saw, which were at Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford on August 9, 1999 and August 11, 1999 as part of the Reunion Tour. We had objectively terrible seats both nights, which did nothing to temper his enthusiasm. As we left the August 11th show, the two male components of two young couples who had sat a row or two ahead of us lamented the fact, to themselves, to their dates, and loud enough for my then thirteen-year-old son and I to hear, that Springsteen had not played either "Hungry Heart or "Born in the USA". Rob snorted derisively (is there any other way?) and said, "You just heard "Trapped" and "Freehold" and you're complaining?" The two men looked at me, waiting for me to check my son. It was now my turn to derisively snort, which I did.
Rob has now paid forward his love of Springsteen to the older of his two girls, Abigail, who adores her daddy and the way he sings "The River" to her. The look on her face, one night much earlier on in the pandemic, during a Facetime call when he told her that Pop Pop also knew that song, and I then sang it along with them for several seconds, was priceless.
My father died when I was fourteen. He and I had a very difficult relationship, especially the final year of his life when the words exchanged between us probably could have been counted using nothing but fingers and toes. Might we have pulled out of it, discovered some middle ground, and forged a relationship that served each of us well when I reached adulthood? Perhaps.
I shall never know.
I do know, however, how much it has benefited me to hear Springsteen speak of the painful relationship he had with his own father for many, many years and their reconciliation not too terribly long before Douglas Springsteen's death. His music, and the stories behind it, helped me forge a bond with my own son, one which remains as solid today as it was when he was just a little boy.
Today, the Poet Laureate of the Jersey Shore celebrates a birthday. I hope it is a happy one. Although it is his birthday, I come not bearing a gift but rather my thanks - from one Jersey guy to another...
...for helping me remember the importance of reckoning with one's past to keep it from dictating your future.
It is a lesson I carry with me every day.
-AK
From the Birthday Boy some words I've worked to make my own (with mixed results) that took on another level or urgency when our children were born. “We honor our parents by not accepting as the final equation the most troubling characteristics of our relationship. I decided between my father and me that the sum of our troubles would not be the summation of our lives together. In analysis, you work to turn the ghosts that haunt you into ancestors who accompany you. That takes hard work and a lot of love, but it's the way we lessen the burdens our children have to carry.”
ReplyDelete- Bruce Springsteen
Amen.
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