So this is a day late because I arrived home at 1:30 am last night after driving home on the NY thruway with one head light and being stopped by a state trooper. That is my excuse.
But why was I out so late and in such a situation? Because I went to see the opera with the American Symphony Orchestra at the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale-on-
Hudson two hours north from here. Death, drama, destruction, betrayal, mad love, infidelity, children out of wedlock, suicide, folk dancing and soaring arias and oratorio. Everything you could hope for in the grand soap opera of life. We saw Halka - the Polish national opera which has lots of folk dancing and costume. My friend Janet was generous enough to spring for the tickets and for dinner! And she offered me a bed for the night, but I have a fifteen year old blind, deaf, incontinent doggy at home whom I could not abandon and thus had my own drama driving home with the one headlight. The policeman was very nice actually and cautioned me to go slow and stop if it started to rain. It was clear sailing though on the thruway and a good discipline for me to take my time and plant myself behind another car all the way down I-87 back home.
Normally I am an inpatient highway driver and like to get in the lane with no one impeding me. I love highway driving actually. On the way up I drove the Taconic State Parkway which is one long green strip between Westchester County and northern NY bordering on Vermont. There are no houses, stores or even street lights on the Taconic. It's a rural isolated road and not one to drive alone on at night, especially not in a down pour. You also want to watch your speed as the state troopers like to hide behind banks of trees and surprise you and its known for grisly accidents from people driving way too fast.
But on a sunny summer day with the clouds rising over the ribbon of road and the surrounding green hills it seems like summer could never end. Driving up the Taconic is the essence of August to me. It's a bittersweet experience traveling north, which feels timeless, even when you know that the summer will be over in just a few short weeks. In fact I saw a first reddened maple yesterday somewhere near the Dutchess County line.
I have a long history of traveling up that road. I first dropped my son off at Y camp off it when he was nine years old and cried all the way back home. Later he went to a music camp in the Berkshires called Greenwood which could be reached via the same route. I spent many an August Saturday traveling to hear him play chamber music in his summer whites with a whole bunch of other barefooted musical geniuses in a beautiful barn on a rolling Berkshire hill. The quality of that experience - hearing him play cello in the orchestra when they rolled through Beethoven's 5th symphony - not an eye was dry among the players or the audience when they were done. It was so emotional. Hearing these young teens sign in harmony and unison together and play Handel and Mozart and Shostakovich with such heart and skill was an incomparable experience. I'll never forget walking out of the performance barn in the pitch black night behind a group of 15-16 year old boys as I headed for my car to make the three hour trek back down the Taconic for home. They were passionately discussing Shostakovich as they headed to their cabin for the night. Only at Greenwood; a magical place which helped shape my son's sense of his place in the world.
Every time I headed home from there I carried the high emotion of this rarified experience of hearing young, gifted musicians and there was always an awareness of its fleeting nature. The sweet melodies of youth linger only in memory. Used to be I would load my son and his cello and his dirty laundry in my Subaru for the long trek home at the end of his few weeks and he would be sad for days. The last time I saw him there was his last year after six years as a counselor. He was headed in the opposite direction driving a new girlfriend back to Boston leaving me to make the trip down the Taconic on my own.
Then he chose to go to Bard College and the Taconic became the source of a new destination and adventures. Summer meant driving up to see him working at the Bard farm where he spent a July eating only kale and beets and trapping woodchucks who were eating the beans. He lost ten pounds then. Eventually that drive took us to his final concert at Fisher Hall as a graduating Senior and graduation fireworks on the Hudson River as is the Bard tradition. It is road laden with memory for me; rich and sweet, melancholy and mournful, the memory of childhood a distant echo. Along the way, however, I have developed my own destination and associations with this summer road by attending an art retreat in Catskill, NY. It's what a mother must do to survive the loss of her children when they move own. Driving up yesterday for an evening of music at Bard, I savored the sweetness of the green road and blue skies above me as if they could never end.
But why was I out so late and in such a situation? Because I went to see the opera with the American Symphony Orchestra at the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale-on-
Normally I am an inpatient highway driver and like to get in the lane with no one impeding me. I love highway driving actually. On the way up I drove the Taconic State Parkway which is one long green strip between Westchester County and northern NY bordering on Vermont. There are no houses, stores or even street lights on the Taconic. It's a rural isolated road and not one to drive alone on at night, especially not in a down pour. You also want to watch your speed as the state troopers like to hide behind banks of trees and surprise you and its known for grisly accidents from people driving way too fast.
But on a sunny summer day with the clouds rising over the ribbon of road and the surrounding green hills it seems like summer could never end. Driving up the Taconic is the essence of August to me. It's a bittersweet experience traveling north, which feels timeless, even when you know that the summer will be over in just a few short weeks. In fact I saw a first reddened maple yesterday somewhere near the Dutchess County line.
I have a long history of traveling up that road. I first dropped my son off at Y camp off it when he was nine years old and cried all the way back home. Later he went to a music camp in the Berkshires called Greenwood which could be reached via the same route. I spent many an August Saturday traveling to hear him play chamber music in his summer whites with a whole bunch of other barefooted musical geniuses in a beautiful barn on a rolling Berkshire hill. The quality of that experience - hearing him play cello in the orchestra when they rolled through Beethoven's 5th symphony - not an eye was dry among the players or the audience when they were done. It was so emotional. Hearing these young teens sign in harmony and unison together and play Handel and Mozart and Shostakovich with such heart and skill was an incomparable experience. I'll never forget walking out of the performance barn in the pitch black night behind a group of 15-16 year old boys as I headed for my car to make the three hour trek back down the Taconic for home. They were passionately discussing Shostakovich as they headed to their cabin for the night. Only at Greenwood; a magical place which helped shape my son's sense of his place in the world.
Every time I headed home from there I carried the high emotion of this rarified experience of hearing young, gifted musicians and there was always an awareness of its fleeting nature. The sweet melodies of youth linger only in memory. Used to be I would load my son and his cello and his dirty laundry in my Subaru for the long trek home at the end of his few weeks and he would be sad for days. The last time I saw him there was his last year after six years as a counselor. He was headed in the opposite direction driving a new girlfriend back to Boston leaving me to make the trip down the Taconic on my own.
Then he chose to go to Bard College and the Taconic became the source of a new destination and adventures. Summer meant driving up to see him working at the Bard farm where he spent a July eating only kale and beets and trapping woodchucks who were eating the beans. He lost ten pounds then. Eventually that drive took us to his final concert at Fisher Hall as a graduating Senior and graduation fireworks on the Hudson River as is the Bard tradition. It is road laden with memory for me; rich and sweet, melancholy and mournful, the memory of childhood a distant echo. Along the way, however, I have developed my own destination and associations with this summer road by attending an art retreat in Catskill, NY. It's what a mother must do to survive the loss of her children when they move own. Driving up yesterday for an evening of music at Bard, I savored the sweetness of the green road and blue skies above me as if they could never end.
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