Benatar

We Can’t Begin To Know It, How Much We Really Care

It is an upwelling, a geyser burst from somewhere deep within — sudden, unexpected in its intensity — and my eyes, unwilling to succumb to this errant force of emotion, sting with the effort of holding back tears.

And why?

“Because she has taken the stage” is an inadequate response.

But that’s why.

Because — after two and a half years of concert-going being an impossibility, of people being denied and disallowed so.many.things while the world has wracked and heaved and grasped and cadged, of being exhausted from carrying burdens triply weighted by the abuses of power and the tyranny of illness — she has taken the stage.

And I am here to see it.

Because the songs she sings — her rasp-contralto belt cutting its own path – one that no one can imitate – across decades of airwaves — resonate. They touch me in a way I never realized fully until now. And I am here to hear them.

And I hear them.

With the heart of a much younger me and the experience of years, I see her and hear her and I think, “YES, hell is for children¹” and remember the poignant-youth throat-tightening look-forward-ness of promises in the dark; I mentally walk through the recalled emotional desert of dry-parched years — years full of too much work and never enough money, of being a child who looked after both the adults I couldn’t depend on and the younger siblings who depended on me — when Wide Awake In Dreamland was a force that sustained I remember.

And my God… MY GOD… I made it.

I made it then.

And now, while the world is imploding and my family of origin continues collapsing, I am assailed with all the Befores while her voice reaches out to touch me deep inside, NOW.

It is like a fingertip gently pressing a scar.

And that — all of that, and more (and less) than that — is why the tears come, unbidden, to eyes unwilling to shed them.

Maybe It’s A Sign Of Weakness, When I Don’t Know What To Say

I look at the man sitting next to me, remembering all we have survived – indeed: thrived – through — not only in the past two and a half years but over the course of the last 19 — and I want to explain this powerful compulsion to cry, to unleash a wellspring of emotion that I didn’t realize was churning so deep within the memories I’ve long repressed. I want to make sense of it, to make sense of the Rewind-Repeat of struggle that has manifested in so many ways throughout my life, to speak aloud a reason for this onslaught of tears.

The words don’t come. But the knowledge does. The knowledge that We — he and I — have traveled a long road full of obstacles we have overcome together as well, and despite my tears-blurred vision, I can see clearly that somehow, some way, we belong.

And despite all the difficulties of the years, I think: Love is a Battlefield, but we are fighting on the same side.

To hell with financial stress and family strife and health struggles and the machinations of a world determined to destroy itself: We will be invincible.

And without warning — despite the throat-tight heart-clench effort to hold them back — those unbidden tears are released…

…suddenly, uncontrollably…

…onto smiling cheeks.

I have borrowed lyrics from several of Pat Benatar’s songs (and the title of one album) throughout this post and linked them to sources that will let you experience them at approximately one tenth of the audio I experienced in person in August. Her concert — billed as Benatar/Giraldo, as the pair have been musically entwined for 43 years and married to each other for 40 — was the first I’ve attended in years, and her astounding talent — undiminished, even at age 69 — shocked me (and rocked me) nearly as much as did the resultant tears.

¹I had a complicated childhood.