3 AM
(Yale, B/ Stanley, J/ Thomas, R/ Goff, J) Performed by Matchbox Twenty
She said it's cold outside and she hands me my raincoat
She's always worried about things like that
She says it's all gonna end and it might as well be my fault
And she only sleeps when it's raining
And she screams and her voice is straining
She says baby
It's 3 am I must be lonely
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
And the rain's gonna wash away I believe it
She's got a little bit of something, God it's better than nothing
And in her color portrait world she believes that she's got it all
She swears the moon don't hang quite as high as it used to
And she only sleeps when it's raining
And she screams and her voice is straining
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
And the rain's gonna wash away I believe it
She believes that life is made up of all that you're used to
And the clock on the wall has been stuck at three for days, and days
She thinks that happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway
But outside it's stopped raining
She says baby
It's 3 am I must be lonely
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
And the rain's gonna wash away I believe it
She's always worried about things like that
She says it's all gonna end and it might as well be my fault
And she only sleeps when it's raining
And she screams and her voice is straining
She says baby
It's 3 am I must be lonely
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
And the rain's gonna wash away I believe it
She's got a little bit of something, God it's better than nothing
And in her color portrait world she believes that she's got it all
She swears the moon don't hang quite as high as it used to
And she only sleeps when it's raining
And she screams and her voice is straining
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
And the rain's gonna wash away I believe it
She believes that life is made up of all that you're used to
And the clock on the wall has been stuck at three for days, and days
She thinks that happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway
But outside it's stopped raining
She says baby
It's 3 am I must be lonely
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
And the rain's gonna wash away I believe it
Here's an odd phenomenon: I have been making these Tunesday posts for nearly three years now; hoping to capture the details of what I know to be a fairly ordinary life. And in the beginning, when I was trying to remember the stories of my childhood, I found this to be an interesting exercise; I could precisely remember what came next in my life and had fun choosing the songs that were significant to me and would somehow tie into those memories. Yet, the older I am in my lifeline, the less engaged I feel with the stories - and now that I have told my story up to 1996 (when Dave and I and our one-year-old, Kennedy, moved to Cambridge) my life feels less episodic: as though everything that came before was "this and this and this", and the last twenty or so years can just be lumped under "and then, motherhood". And that's not really fair - being Dave's wife and the mother of my two loverly daughters has been soul-satisfying - but there has been a happy sameness to my days since we arrived here; a stability and fulfillment that averages out the peaks and valleys. For some reason, I haven't been burning to tell what stories there are from the past two decades, I have missed a lot of Tunesdays out of waning interest in my own biography, but I'll try to get back into it.
For this week, I've chosen a song from 1996 off of Matchbox Twenty's debut album for two reasons: because I loved this band from the beginning (and this song from their debut in particular), and because Dave and I saw Rob Thomas performing at the Night to Nurture gala in Toronto on Saturday (that's Dave's cellphone picture up top, which really doesn't show how close we were to the performance). There's no deeper personal meaning for me in the song itself (unless I want to point out that this gala usually involves us staying out drinking and dancing until the band stops at 2 AM; close enough to 3 by the time we get back to our hotel, and the only day all year that I'd be up that late), but this is the second time we've seen Rob Thomas live, and both times, he sang this song with true passion; a standout performance in a night of many such that's worth memorialising.
So, if the past twenty years have been a blur, I may as well do a general lumping of these gala events here. It used to be called the "GIFT Gala" (Grocery Industry or Foundation or something Together), and funny story: We got onto the crowded elevator at the hotel to go to the event this year, and there were others all dressed up on there, and one woman who was in jeans asked where we were all going. A dressy woman replied, "The GIFT Gala", and the woman in jeans asked, "Oh yeah? And what kind of gift are you expecting to get?" The other woman said, "Oh, we don't get anything. It's a charity event for children's hospitals, so I guess it's them who 'get the gift'?" So to clarify: It's no longer called the GIFT Gala, it only ever had that name because it's sponsored by companies involved in the Grocery Foundation, and has never been for children's hospitals (but it is for children's charities: The Kids Help Phone and Toonies for Tummies for many years now). Dave and I exchanged knowing looks from our years of experience.
Because Dave has spent most of his career working in the grocery industry, we have gone to this gala intermittently as representatives of three different food companies. The first year we went was 1999, and I remember that precisely because Mallory was nine months old and still breastfeeding and we could only go out and stay out overnight if she would start taking a bottle; she fought it for the week beforehand, but in the end, she took to it well enough that I could leave the girls with my parents and have my first alcoholic drink in nearly two years (it only took a couple glasses of wine to make me loopy that night). We were there with Maple Leaf Foods, and Dave was a fairly junior guy in the company, but it was exciting for me to be out around people, all dressed up, rubbing elbows with captains of industry (of both sexes) and their elegant spouses. In those years, there were so many events to take advantage of during the cocktail reception - fortune-telling booths, acrobatic displays, photoshoots with Harleys and supermodels, casino tables - but over the years, it has all been reduced to the silent auctions; it has certainly become less glamourous over the years, but that first year, I was starry-eyed. Until the show began - an unfunny Don Rickles making WWII Japanese soldier jokes followed by Englebert Humperdinck gyrating his hips and smack-talking Tom Jones was disappointing to say the least. But, as people who didn't have the money to ever go anywhere, Dave and I appreciated being invited along to this evening out on the company's dime.
The rest of the years kind of blur together - I remember them only having a comedian one other time (I recall it was John Byner, but not who he was paired with), and after that first year, the performances were all fantastic. We had a stageside table for Burton Cummings (which kind of blew my mind; he was right above me singing all the songs I grew up on), also stageside for Michael Bublé before he got big. Barenaked Ladies were there one year and Dave and I rushed the dance area in front of the stage to see them up close; Dave was able to shake each of their hands at the end of the show and caught one of the guitar picks that they tossed out. Over the years we saw Don Henley (which also blew my mind as he sang The Eagles' hits as well as his solo songs) when Dave worked with Associated Brands (more awkward for me since I didn't know anyone at our table), and in the time since Dave started working at Conestoga Meats, we have seen Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5 (me swooning over Adam Levine, who Dave refers to as my secret boyfriend along with Rob Thomas), and OneRepublic. For Canada's sesquicentennial last year, they had Canadian superbands Blue Rodeo and Hedley: we loved them both. And although it has only been a couple of years since Dave took me to see Rob Thomas at Casino Rama, he knew that I would enjoy his show this year; and I did. Our dinner table was only two back from the side of the stage, but since there was a wide empty area between the tables and the stage, Dave and I (and only two other women) went over there to stand during the concert. There was security there preventing us from going right up to the stage, but we weren't ten feet from Rob Thomas when he'd come over to our side to sing; I know he was pointing at me during Smooth and called me his Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa, so I've got that going for me (yes, he could have been pointing at one of the other two women standing near me, but I'll stick to the story I like best).
On the downside, my complaint every year is that this is essentially a work event for Dave, and we sit and eat with customers; people I don't know and feel awkward making small talk with. During the cocktail hour beforehand, Dave will be talking to me but always looking over my shoulder, breaking off mid-sentence to get the attention of some former customer or coworker who's walking by. I smile and shake hands and "Oh yes, how nice to see you again" to all these people I don't remember, and no matter how entertaining the concert part of the evening is, I am no longer poor enough to look forward to this evening as a big night out. In my thirties, I'd go and get a professional updo for the gala night; this year, Kennedy did my hair. I used to fret about buying something to wear that would let me fit in with the Toronto glitterati; this year, I went to Value Village to get a new top layer to update an old dress. I used to always wear all of my gold bangles and bracelets together, and this year, I bought cheap silver-coloured hoop earrings so I could wear a plain silver bracelet; the more money I have, the less of it I'm willing to spend on this event, which is a perverse kind of contempt.
At dinner, I sat beside the same wife of a customer I sat beside last year; so at least I was able to genuinely show interest in her kids and continue a sort of a relationship. Dave was sitting beside the wife of a different customer - he's an American who Dave sees once a year for a golf tournament, but who Dave has always tried to get up to this event - and they were both lovely and interesting people, around our own age. At one point it came up that Dave had taken me to Paris for my last birthday, and Dave took out his phone to show them the picture of me reading The Da Vinci Code in front of the Mona Lisa. They asked if we had been to Paris before, and Dave replied that I had as a backpacking eighteen-year-old, and this led to the woman asking me if I had ever been to Italy. I replied that yes I had, on that same backpacking trip, and then, obnoxiously, I suddenly remembered, "Oh yes, and I went again last fall as a university graduation present for my daughter." I pulled out my phone to show the obnoxious photos of me reading books on a Venetian gondola and at the Roman Colosseum, and as this woman began explaining that going to Italy was number one on her bucket list - that she hopes they'll be able to go for at least a month after her husband retires - I felt so stupid for just "suddenly remembering" that I was there just a few months ago. Obnoxious. Meanwhile, Dave was scrolling through the photos on his phone to get to one of me reading a book up at Machu Picchu, and those pictures blew their minds - they had never seen anything like that (and there I was posing with my book; this "posing with books" is more meaningful as an inside family joke than as anything I expect strangers to understand; I have no idea what they must have thought of me.) When we were saying goodbye to this couple later, the wife asked what our next big adventure is, and I finally had the sense to explain that any travel we've done has been all relatively recent; that this is neither routine or frequent. (But then she asked if we've ever been to Cuba - which I find is always interesting to Americans, even if it's one of the cheapest places we Canadians can go - and I had to admit that, yes, I've been a few times.)
Yes, dinner conversation was interesting this year, and Rob Thomas was fantastic. After, we went out to see the live band in the adjoining room and two of Dave's women coworkers pulled me onto the dancefloor, where I (and soon Dave) spent the next few hours; of course, that was fun, too. Happily, there's an indoor passageway back to the hotel we usually stay at, and it was a quick stroll back to our room and a general passing out at around 3 AM. The first time we had the gala experience, it was exciting and a real gift to me - the young mother, tied to a breastfeeding infant and a busy toddler and never a full night's sleep let alone an elegant evening out. Now, it's a bit of a chore - making nice with the wives of Dave's customers, the husbands of his coworkers; going to the trouble of making myself presentable; sleeping on a communal mattress (the older I get, the more grossed out I am by staying in hotels): I am so less impressed by "galas" now.
Odd, but I believe that life is made up of all that you're used to; how funny that I've gotten used to this.
