I want to share an experience I had recently at a Pride event I wanted to attend with my family.
It was a smaller, yet equally important gathering a short drive from home. We spent a good amount of time walking around, visiting vendor booths and seeing what was going on. We were resting our feet inside the main building at a decorated table, listening to a musician on stage.
It was just her and a guitar in front of sparsely filled rows of tables about an hour before a show was to begin. She played to the echo of a busy building while many sat down to eat after ordering food.
We weren’t able to stay for the show afterwards, but I felt lucky to be a part of her small opening audience. She dedicated a song to her dad and started to sing “Leader of the Band” by Dan Fogelberg.
I listened intently and started to tear up a little bit. All I said to my boys was “It’s a really good old song”.
The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band
I don’t know her story.
Maybe she had a dad that knew the precious and enormous power of his reaction as she revealed her identity. Maybe he took that moment and held space for her to be who she is or maybe he took that vulnerability and crushed her soul with it.
Maybe it was never a conversation at all because it didn’t have to be.
Maybe she was always accepted with open arms, maybe it took her years to get there with her family. Maybe it was somewhere in between.
But how moving to see that she got to sing a tender song on stage at Pride about a dad that loved her. You don’t have to be in the LGBTQ community to long for that.
🏳️🌈 The whole point of Pride is to be free and accepted as is. And that is all.
Side Note
The two religious fanatics outside spouting bible verses and hate through a loudspeaker were pummeled with a sideways torrential rain for about 10 minutes when we got there. Just hammered.
It was a poetic justice worth every effort to attend a Pride event in the conservative Midwest. Did they leave? No. But volunteers lined the sidewalk in front of them and opened up rainbow umbrellas to peacefully shield attendees from being harassed.
That’s a world I’m glad to live in.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but the failures of key men have painted broad strokes on me. I’ve never really had a true leader I could follow in male human form until midlife.
So I’m the leader of my own little band. I’d like to think I can leave a legacy behind like her dad did. I want it to be good.
Sometimes we end up in situations we didn’t count on. But we still have an opportunity to say “the buck stops here” and make big changes. Cycle breaking is the shizz.
I also consider myself to be a living legacy to the leader of the band. It just wasn’t the one(s) I planned on.
Mood music for this post: Leader of the Band by Dan Fogelberg (YouTube link)
Music referrals do not mean I endorse every lyric or action ever made by any particular artist. Music is a wonderful nostalgic healer.