SoulShine-Govt Mule

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXbsq3C4LZM&feature=related
Let your soul shine...
Soulshine, it's better than sunshine
It's better than moonshine, Damn sure better than rain.

I love this song, it is about hope.  I love the memory of the first time this song laid it's self on my life.  It was January 2009, the House of Blues, Houston.  I was with Superman, but I didn't really get that yet.

The song begins...
When you can't find the light,
That got you through the cloudy days,
When the stars ain't shinin' bright,
You feel like you've lost you're way,
When those candle lights of home,
Burn so very far away,
Well you got to let your soul shine...

He got the tickets from his children.  It seems they had decided to nudge him.  He was 2 years on the other side of a 30 plus year marriage that ended while the rest of the world was still racing for a cure. He asked me if I would like to go. It was so much more than that really.  He wanted to know if I would like to go as his date; stay the weekend. I said yes.  I said yes to the possibility of possibilities.  Possibilities I thought were past tense in my life.  For less heroic reasons, I was also 2 years on the other side of a 30 year stint.

He would tell his children he had asked someone and she had said yes.  I hope that they know I understood the small papercut they felt on their souls as they smiled a response on the surface to the news.  He said he told them it was a weekend date. This news lead the oldest of the sons to ask when they could meet her.  I suffered a little minor papercut myself when he told me he responded there is no "her".  At the same time I was equally relieved that this was not a declaration of coupleship.  I wanted to be a her, but only in his eyes.   This wasn't about the world seeing me with someone.  This was about me seeing me with someone.  Not just someone, but someone who wasn't the him of 30 years.  

Having navigated the weeks that would lead to our House of Blues night we packed our bags and headed south.  I know we had packed our hesitations along with our hopes.  You don't get to the other side of 30 years of a different life without a few scars whether your battles were heroic or not.  But I managed to contain those thoughts and I left home with the glimmer of hope. 

Just like my daddy used to say
He used to say soulshine,
It's better than sunshine,
It's better than moonshine,
Damn sure better than rain.

That weekend he opened doors for me literally and metaphorically.  I smiled a lot that night and I loved the band that somehow I had grown up not knowing.  He would show me his Gov't Mule and I would show him my ability to celebrate the beauty of life without reservation.  This ability to celebrate life was one I learned from my father. I had forgotten the beauty of being in proximity of a man who believes you are enough.  A 2nd lesson I had learned at my father's knee.  I had become tarnished in my now-over previous tour of duty.

I grew up thinking that I had it made, Gonna make it on my own
Life can take the strongest man, make him feel so alone
Now and then I feel a cold wind  Blowin through my achin bones
He said "Boy, it is the darkness before the dawn
Sometimes a man can feel this emptiness, like a woman has robbed him of his very soul
A woman too, God knows, she can feel like this too
And when your world seems cold, you got to let your spirit take control.

So for a weekend I wasn't who I had been most recently, but a glimmer of who I would later become.  Superman would hold my hand and I would allow myself this space. I realized I didn't need promises from him or to follow a path well worn by others.  It was a lovely weekend. I have several clear memories that it has taken me until now to see.  To see, that in the House of Blues in Houston, on a cold winter's day, I would take the first real step to leaving my blues behind.  I didn't fall in love, he didn't save me.  I wanted neither.  Simply, he gave me a moment that allowed me to listen to his band and to hear the distant echo of my fathers love. He helped me remember the faint feeling of being enough.

Oh, it's better than sunshine, it's better than moonshine, Damn sure better than rain
Yeah now people don't mind, we all get this way sometime

Gotta let your soulshine, shine until the break of day.