DAY FIFTY-TWO: March 11, 2008 600-mile drive to Chicago

We just saw the most amazing sunrise! After pulling out at 5:45AM this morning to a sky screaming with stars, we drove on a dark two-lane road to our first freeway, being careful of pre-dawn wandering deer. Out here the stars go all the way to the horizon! There were two enormous shooting stars to guide us on our journey east. Then, there was a dark pink glow out my side of the car, and a giant ball of fire emerged from the horizon, gently lighting the brown, swaying grasses with the optimism of a new day.

As we drive through the entire state if Iowa on the I-80, I can’t stop thinking about last night. There was so much love in the air; you could cut it with a knife! People had driven all the way from Concordia, Kansas just to see us one more time. Everyone is reading this blog, it seems, which I had no idea about during those sometimes-lonely days on the road.

Last night before the concert I sat behind the curtain, as usual, hoping and praying we would have a good crowd for our final performance. There was two people who preceded us: Marv, who told jokes, and then Mary, who announced us. Marv was a stitch! He looked like a straight-ahead guy, dressed in a business-like suit, when he asked me before going on what I thought he did for a living. Not wanting to say “insurance salesman,” I said, “actor.” He laughed and said he was now a professional jokester, and that he had been playing piano for about a year with his nose. He had a rather nice nose, but I was hoping that if he preceded me he didn’t have a cold!

I walked on stage to a full house. All during the first set the thought kept entering my head that each piece would be its last performance for a long while. There was no time to be sentimental, I had to play my best for this audience and stay focused, this concert being just like all the others. I hung up my green dress at intermission and slipped on the black one for the last time. Those gowns had really held up! I knew the second half would go lickety-split and then we would be done.

The audience was like a powerful ocean last night, with waves of laughter and applause that seemed to go on forever. They even rose to their feet before we had finished the last song! Frank had just finished a hotshot cadenza, and people went wild! We had to calm them down so that we could finish our “last song,” then tease them into the encore. My microphone had died by then, and I had to yell into the crowd. Frank then came on stage with a camera to take a picture of this. Imagine, asking an audience to freeze themselves in time, just so Frank could get them with his cell phone camera like an enormous family photo! They seemed charmed, knowing this was our last big moment of our tour.

There was a frenzy of activity at the CD table as I shook hundreds of hands and nearly ran out of ink from signing programs and CDs. It was weird; as joyful as it all was, we were still working. We had to concentrate while performing. We had crowd control and much commerce later. It was like being the host and hostess at our own elaborate party, paying attention to every detail. We then had to change clothes, pack up, load the car one more time not letting the stage door automatically close and lock on us before being finished, and drive to our hotel and try to sleep before our long drive today. Our real moment was the night before at the theater, relaxed, realizing the enormity of what we had almost completed.

While this blog has been a record of our daily adventures, I guess it is also somewhat of a love story. It’s a story of the power and joy between two people radiating from the stage and making others happy for a while. It’s about our sheer love of music, which we never grow tired of. It’s about laughing and learning through the difficult times, and appreciating all the wonderful little surprises each day brings. Would we do this again?
Wait a minute… let us catch our breath…
ABSOLUTELY!