a symphony in the park

I went to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in Piedmont Park tonight.

I thought, “this is why you live here. In the city.”

I sat there on the grass with my illegal glass of champagne and listened in the cool of the spring as the birds swirled over Lake Clara Meer.

I walked home with M & A after.

We parted in Tech Square,

and I carried on.

Down my W Peach.

I walked down in magic hour—

when the lighting is just magnificent.

There was a crescent moon.

And some bright star—maybe Venus?

With Momma, everything is Venus.

“Oh look at that star—I think it’s Venus.”

It makes me smile thinking about it.

Maybe it is Venus.

Maybe that’s her loving glow tonight, guiding me forward,

with my still illegal, to-go champagne—

I danced my way past the Biltmore and moved onto the strip by the Coda and the Norfolk Southern building.

I texted momma, “Do you ever just feel like you’re so lucky to live your life? Like you’re just so lucky to be here?”

She said this, “you know, many times I do.

I think actually even on the bad days—I never feel hopeless.

I have to pay attention to that.

I know there’s always something to be grateful for—

I have ragged on myself in my later years for not having a career path and how that would have allowed me to make different choices in my life and be more free—

But you know?

I just wanted to have a family,

and a house,

and to be married and to have a dog.

I know people probably laugh at that.

I probably laugh at that.

But you know?

There’s probably something good about that.

That I didn’t have the career.

And that I didn’t have the certain amount of money and all those things.

I can’t even find the words—

There’s something to be said about all that though.”

“Yeah,” I said. “There is something to be said about that. There’s something to be said about looking at your life and being content.

To look back and say, ‘Yeah—that was good. I did that (smiles).’”

And you know?

There is.

There is something about feeling the music—really feeling it.

You get that little shimmy in your shoulders and that smirk.

And then you’re dancing at the corner of Linden Ave.

(Not wildly darling, this is a public space after all.)

And you watch the cars pass on their way to I-75/85.

And you stroll by the Bank of America Building’s amber glow.

And you peek up at that crescent moon (with Venus shining beneath it).

And you hear the applause and cheers for the symphony in the park.

And you walk on—to the beat of your own stride.

At your pace.

Knowing that you don’t know—

but trusting the song in your ears,

echoed by the gratefulness in your heart,

and the joy in your feet,

moving down the street.

Trusting that as you pour the leftover bottle of cava into your Gran’s wine glass, and sit to write—

the world is moving in the direction that it’s supposed to.

 It doesn’t always feel like that.

But maybe the heart trusts what the mind can’t know.

Maybe Sunday isn’t always scary.

Maybe it’s just the introduction to the adventure ahead.

Maybe she’s an 8-year-old on the high dive—

Momma’s voice carries over the water, “Jump Trey!”

Spring. Splash.