For the first time in over two years I am touring. It is just a short tour, 5 shows over the Memorial Day weekend. Still it is very significant. A year ago I didn't think this would ever be possible again. It took a few things to have transpired for it to be possible for me. The biggest one, is Zane and Holden’s mother moving back to California, and especially Santa Barbara. It would not have been possible for me to tour had she still lived out of state. Of course, having Toad still want me to tour with them was certainly a necessity. As I have stated on this blog before working for Toad was the best job I ever had, not because of the bright lights and big cities, but because I was appreciated, respected, and given a lot of freedom to be creative in my work. That means a lot to me, and most employees.
So as I was working my first show on the trip, it dawned on me that this job had help prepare me for being Holden’s father. There are a lot of stressful jobs in the world, a wall street broker, Bering Sea crab fishing, and many others. There are few jobs though, that require you to work in front of an audience. Back in the nineties it wasn’t unusual for us to do shows for over 20,000 people. When you headline a show for 20,000 people, and you have to do the changeover, after the opening band plays, you are working in front of 20,000 people. They are actively watching you, because they know that when you are done, they get to see what they paid good money to see, which was not me setting up gear. When something would fail on stage the whole show would come to a stop, while I tried to figure out what went wrong, and how best to fix it. To add to the stress, the person who’s gear failed is equally stressed because their gear isn’t working, and they are holding up the show. One would think that it’s the ability to not care what people think of you, that would make working such a job tolerable, but in actuality, for me it was being able to focus on the job completely. To become so immersed in what I was doing, that I didn’t even take in the fact that I was working in front of people.
As a parent, we have to be that focused on our children. As the parent of an autistic child, we have to be even more focused. It’s not that we learn to negate all the background “noise”, but rather that we bring our focus up on the foreground so much, that the rest becomes so background, it all but disappears. As a parent of a special needs child, we cannot allow our attention to drift at all. The stakes are just too high.
I don’t know if I am just naturally the type of person that can focus in on one thing, while still being aware of my surroundings, or if working as a roadie, developed those skills for me, but either way, it helped prepare me for what I never knew was coming. Now looking back on all that I have done in life, not much else could have better prepared me for the journey I would take in life, when Holden was born. So having the opportunity to do this job again, has really helped show me the light. I can now add that it taught me to be a better parent, to remain calm in bad situations, and to learn to deal with the situation at hand as best, and as efficiently as possible. To adapt to the ever changing stages, lights, temperatures, and cities that go along with tour, just like I need to adapt to the ever changing entity that is Holden.
Last but not least, two things have become very apparent to me on this tour: 1) I am not as young as I used to be. I was discussing this with one of the other crew guys, and as he so wisely pointed out, it’s the recovery time that gets elongated by age. 2) I miss my boys SOOOOOOO much!
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