The Rainbow's End

Thor accompanied me to Patty Griffin's concert last night. He says that I like "lesbian music", so I warned him ahead of time that Patty's acoustic folk style may not be his cup of beer, but he loves me and went with me anyway.

During the opening act, Thor whispered to me that he wished he'd taken his medication for ADHD, and I agreed that would have been helpful. He was all over the place last night. He couldn't sit still. He couldn't stop his mind from racing, and I knew it would be a long concert for him since Patty Griffin rarely employs flash pots or smoke machines in her performances.

While the audience waited for Patty to begin her show, a cute boy and fiddle-playing girl charmed us with their music, although not enough for me to take note of their names, apparently. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thor counting. He then informed me that 24 people in the back 10 rows were wearing eyeglasses. I thanked him for the information and took hold of his hand.

A few minutes later, he pulled his hand away and began counting again. Then he whispered, "Toddy, what is 53 times 16?"

"Honey, I have no idea."

Thor asked me to get my cell phone out and use the calculator function to answer his math question. I whispered back to him, "I don't have it with me. It's in the car."

"I need to know," he insisted. So I attempted to do the math by drawing imaginary numbers on my leg. I came up with eight hundred and something. Then I asked him why he needed to know.

"See that light board? It has 53 rows of 16 buttons," he said. "But there is no way that totals eight hundred," he said a bit too loudly.

I was roped into the debate and stopped listening to the cute boy and fiddle girl entirely. "Baby, if there were 53 rows of 10 buttons, that would be 530 buttons, so I think I'm right," I said a bit too loudly.

"NO WAY!" he boomed.

The lady with the rat's nest of hair who sat in front of us turned around and said, "Could you please keep your voices down!"

"Sorry," said Thor.

Soon Patty came out and Thor giggled at me when my tears started falling during her opening song. I sniffled and hummed along throughout the wonderful concert. Thor shifted impatiently and was, I assume, counting microphone stands or attempting to estimate the number of people wearing red. After she finished, Thor jumped up and stood in the aisle anxiously waiting to depart. "Thor, she's going to do an encore," I told him. His face was crestfallen, and he sat back down next to me.

When we left I hugged him and thanked him for tolerating my evening of "lesbian music". He said that he was glad there were some things he had to do only once in his life and seeing a Patty Griffin concert was one of these things.

"I'm sorry you didn't like it," I said.

His reply was perfect. "I loved spending the whole night with you, though." God, I love this man.

On the way home he ranted about Patty Griffin. "She was like Jewel or something. And it sounded like she was just singing the same exact song over and over all night. And then she did an encore! Why did she do an encore? Nobody made her come back out. We were just clapping for the concert, we weren't trying to get her to come back out. At least Jewel only did an encore because they made her do an encore, but nobody was making Patty Griffin do an encore."

"I will never make you go to another Patty Griffin concert again, baby," I promised.

"Next time you can go, and I will stay home and scrub the toilet. I will scrub the toilet all night, and you can come home and tell me about the concert," he said.

I imagined us together years from now. Me going to concerts with my friends while he scrubs the toilet at home. It made me happy to think about the future, even one in which my husband stays home scrubbing toilets while I attend concerts without him. As I thought about my dreams, the closing song Patty sang came to mind.

Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.