Our Song

Last Friday evening, on a whim, we tried Ciao Bella, an Italian restaurant in downtown Lee’s Summit. Just as we parked, the closing strains of Eva Cassidy’s People Get Ready played from my iPod through the car speakers.

The restaurant sits on SE Main Street across from the historic Lee’s Summit Depot.  Just west of the depot lies the track on which daily Amtrak trains run and that separates SE and SW Main Street.  The Depot has been retired so passengers board from a kiosk on the other side of the track.  Brick store fronts stand along SE Main like a choir arrayed to serenade arriving passengers.  These buildings and their occupants have sung their siren songs since well before horses and trains were mostly replaced by automobiles.

We were seated in the front by the west window as the sun was dropping to the horizon.  Orange  cast rays slipped through the blinds and made me squint.  Across the street sits a retired caboose from the Missouri Pacific Lines as a part of the historic depot.  For the last minutes before sunset, the upper window in the caboose glowed.  Its light lit a memory of a time when a kerosene lantern hung over the card game played by the conductors as the train rolled into its overnight run.

Our meal was served as I started my second glass of Chianti - just when the glow in the caboose was extinguished like someone twisted down the wick of the lamp.  In this part of Ciao Bella there are only two tables and the bar separated us from the noise in the main dining room.  Our talk had only to be slightly above a whisper.  We ate slowly and relished the conversation and the interludes where our thoughts weren’t disrupted by the decibels of dining room noise. 

As our meal was finished, in the background James Taylor was singing about going to Carolina in his mind.  It was as if he’d stopped here for a meal but heard the whistle beckon him to return to the Smokies and the Sandhills.  For us, the aromas and flavors of the meal were seasoned with memories of places lived and, as Carole King reminded us that we have a friend, the traveling companions who’ve crossed our path.  Such songs make every meal taste better.

On my iPod there are several hundred songs.  But my favorite playlist has only eighty-one.  For me, the song is in the words.  In my songs there are stories of life, birth, loss and love.  There is philosophy and sophistry.  Neil Young reminds me that if I follow every dream, I might get lost and Paul Simon reassures us that there is a bridge over life’s troubled waters.  There are songs about baby buckaroos and trains that have no names – it is the music of our life.

In music there is a term – rubato.   It means that the artist exercises freedom in time and rhythm to match his mood or message.  Every day of every life is a song.  We write our own song and play it for every person who shares our space.  As we reached the coda of our song at Ciao Bella, the sun had set, the air had cooled and our hunger was sated.  Our thoughts turned to harmonies we could write into tomorrow's song.

--td