Flashback, Move Forward
A day with John Lennon, my dad, my daughter and her partner, a dog, and a hit song
Our life together is so precious together.
We have grown. We have grown.
Although our love is still special,
Let's take a chance and fly away
Somewhere alone...
My father and John Lennon were born 12 days apart. They had a mutual love for Elvis and married early, as adults from that generation did. Tragedy helped shape their lives — Lennon’s in his childhood, my father’s after he became an adult.
The similarities stop there. We all know Lennon’s story, which is endlessly retold and reshaped every few months or years. My father’s story is more mundane, but no less important, at least to me and to other members of my family.
Every time I think about Lennon, I flash back to the night in December 1980 when we all found out, watching as Howard Cosell broke the news late during a Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets. Every time, for a moment, I am 15 again, a place no one in their right mind should want to revisit.
My father was not much of a Lennon fan; he preferred McCartney. He didn’t understand or appreciate Lennon’s politics, which were out there for someone living on the Texas Gulf Coast. In fact, if you came right down to it, Dad was happy to ditch The Beatles for Elvis, Chuck Berry, or Little Richard any day of the week. Our entire family was affected far more by Elvis’ death than by Lennon’s.
Still, on the Tuesday after we found out, I came home after school and rummaged through my father’s records, where I found the first two Beatles albums. Dad skipped the psychedelia phase but returned for “Abbey Road” — “Come Together” was played over and over in our house — and he loved “Imagine” (except for the no God part).
Fractured Time
Since the pandemic, days seem incredibly long, but the weeks and months fly by. And with business mercifully (I think) shifting into high gear over these past two months, I’ve rarely had time to think and process.
We’re in that fall weather pattern in which beautiful weekdays become progressively gray, with drizzle starting on Friday and continuing almost until the work week begins for the majority of the population. The older I get, the longer the days seem when it’s gray outside, even though daytime is getting shorter and shorter.
Earlier today, I took Penny out for a walk and our always social dog decided to have a brief sidewalk play date with another pup. (This is nothing new…) The dog’s owner and I started chatting, exchanging the usual series of niceties you have when encountering strangers on the street with two pets becoming intimately familiar with each other’s body parts in a remarkably short period of time.
The woman asked how we got Penny. I gave her the short “shelter dog/foster fail” version, resisting the temptation to bring up my dad’s “role” in all of it. (If you don’t know the story, click on the link below.) My father has been on my mind a lot today, which would have been his 83rd birthday, and Penny has given me the “look” twice that tells me his spirit is nearby.
I did tell the full story to a very patient Colby, Emma’s partner who is visiting Virginia for the first time this weekend. Emma and Colby are going to see “Jesus Christ Superstar” because our oldest daughter has several friends who came back to the show when it went back out on the road this fall.
Originally from Seattle (ironically one of my father’s favorite cities), Colby moved to New York several years ago but had never been to the D.C. area. Jill is in the middle of a three-day board meeting, so I’m serving as the de facto host for the weekend.
This afternoon, we collectively shook our heads after realizing it’s been only three weeks since we saw each other at the wedding of Emma’s first cousin, Elisabeth, in Chapel Hill. Since getting back, I’ve written a magazine story and column, done the interviews for a third story, wrapped up the editing on almost 200 headshots, and photographed a two-day conference, dancers for “The Nutcracker,” a cabaret and a high school musical. That type of schedule continues through the middle of November.
I’m grateful for the work, but when I write it all down, it’s easy to understand why time feels fractured.
Flashback: December 2010
Thirteen years ago, on another traffic-infested trip from Northern Virginia to New York with Kate and Emma, I stuck “Double Fantasy — Stripped Down” into our van’s CD player.
Lennon’s first album in five years, “Double Fantasy” was a long-awaited rebirth for the former Beatle, who emerged from a self-imposed period of domesticity that followed the breakup of one of the best — if not the GOAT —bands of all time. In between, Lennon suffered through an attempted (and finally thwarted) deportation by the Nixon Administration, dealt with fans’ lingering (and, for many, ongoing) anger toward Yoko Ono, separated from her, dove into the wilderness of drugs and drink, and finally emerged a mature man.
Within two months after hitting 40, he was dead.
I had enjoyed “Double Fantasy” when it was released in 1980, butI wasn’t thrilled by it, in part because I didn’t understand the place Lennon was at then. (The difference between 15 and 40.) And while I admire Ono’s chutzpah, I was never much of a Yoko fan.
“Stripped Down,” a “new” album without overdubs, intrigued me however. As the boredom of the New Jersey Turnpike wafted past, I found myself listening in a new way to Lennon’s valedictory effort.
It's been too long since we took the time.
No one's to blame.
I know time flies so quickly.
I thought about going to Central Park and visiting Strawberry Fields on the birthday anniversary, although I knew it would be filled with people playing guitars, singing, weeping, and flailing their way through the Beatles/Lennon catalogue. I'd been there before and decided I couldn't take it, especially when there were more important things to tend to — my children.
I spent the weekend with my girls and Ben, running them to various things that meant something to their lives at the time (Ben to an audition, Emma to the Cake Boss bakery in Hoboken, and Kate to every kiosk and trinket she saw). I never made the turn right to go to Central Park.
Driving back to Virginia, I put the CD in again briefly and listened, thinking of my dad and the weekend. As the songs played — even Yoko sounds a little better in the “Stripped Down” incarnation — I regretted briefly not making the walk to the park. Then I looked at my daughters — Emma napping on the passenger’s side, Kate sitting in the back looking at the laptop — and realized I had been where I needed to be all along.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these.
Strange days, indeed.
Life Cycle Meditations
About an hour ago, I left Emma and Colby at the house so they can take much needed naps. We’re meeting Jill soon during a break so she can see them, so I came to ESP, a nearby coffee shop that plays great music throughout the day.
I came here ostensibly to work on the magazine story, which I have to finish this weekend before another early morning shoot on Sunday (weather permitting). Instead, I decided to take a moment and meditate about all that has taken place recently — not just professionally, but personally — and soon found myself writing this.
One thing I especially enjoy about this coffee shop is that I don’t know a lot of the music, but occasionally something from the past surprises me. Today, it was Live’s “Lightning Crashes,” a song that is loaded with personal meaning.
A meditation on life, death, and reincarnation, the song was huge in 1995, the year I got divorced and Jill and I got together. Each time I heard it, I felt we had a chance.
Set in a hospital emergency room, it tells of people dying and babies being born. The song was written in memory of a 19-year-old girl, a longtime friend of the band who was killed by a drunk driver while fleeing from the police after a robbery in York, Pa.
“Lightning crashes an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now to the baby down the hall.”
From its quiet beginning to its thrashing end, it is a song about the energy of life, never ending and always transferring from one person to another. It’s a perfect song for today.
Sometimes that — and love — is all you need.
“…for a moment I am 15 again, a place no one in their right mind should want to revisit.” That like made me literally LOL, Glenn 😂