A Belated Gift

Our life together is so precious together.
We have grown. We have grown.
Although our love is still special,
Let's take a chance and fly away somewhere alone...

My father and John Lennon were born 12 days apart. They had a mutual love for Elvis and married early, as adults from that generation did. Tragedy helped shape their lives — Lennon’s in his childhood, my father’s after he became an adult.

This year, both would have turned 70 -- Lennon this past weekend and my dad on October 20. Neither made it.

The similarities stop there. We all know Lennon’s story, which is endlessly retold and reshaped every few months or years. My father’s story is more mundane, but no less important, at least to me and to other members of my family.

This past weekend, en route on another traffic-infested trip from Northern Virginia to New York with my girls, I stuck in the “new” CD, “Double Fantasy — Stripped Down.”

Lennon’s first album in five years, “Double Fantasy” was a long-awaited rebirth for the former Beatle, who emerged from a self-imposed period of domesticity that followed the breakup of one of the best — if not the singular — rock bands of all time. In between, he suffered through an attempted (and finally thwarted) deportation by the Nixon Administration, dealt with fans’ lingering (and, for many, ongoing) anger toward Yoko Ono, separated from her, dove into the wilderness of drugs and drink, and finally emerged, a mature man. And within two months after hitting 40, he was dead.

While I liked “Double Fantasy,” I wasn’t thrilled by it, in part because I didn’t understand the place Lennon was at then. (And, to be honest, I was never much of a Yoko fan.)

“Stripped Down” intrigued me, however, and as the boredom of the New Jersey Turnpike wafted past, I found myself listening in a new way to Lennon’s valedictory effort. I flashed back to the night we all found out, watching a Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets when Howard Cosell broke the news. For a moment I was 15 again, a place no one in their right mind should want to revisit.

My dad was not much of a Lennon fan; he preferred McCartney. He didn’t understand or appreciate Lennon’s politics, which were out there for someone living on the Texas Gulf Coast. In fact, if you came right down to it, he was happy to ditch the Beatles for Elvis any day of the week. Our entire family was affected far more by Elvis’ death than by Lennon’s.

Still, on the Tuesday after we found out, I came home after school and rummaged through my dad’s records, where I found the first three Beatles albums. He skipped the psychedelic stuff but returned for “Abbey Road” — “Come Together” played over and over in our house — and he loved “Imagine” (except for the no God part).

It's been too long since we took the time.
No one's to blame.
I know time flies so quickly.

I thought about going to Central Park and visiting Strawberry Fields on the birthday anniversary, although I knew it would be filled with people playing guitars, singing, weeping, and flailing their way through the Beatles/Lennon catalogue. That I couldn’t take, especially when there were more important things to tend to: my children.

So, I spent the weekend with my girls and Ben, running them to various things that mean something to their lives (Ben to an audition, Emma to the Cake Boss bakery in Hoboken, and Kate to every kiosk and trinket she saw). I never made the turn right to go to Central Park.

Driving back to Virginia last night, I put the CD in again briefly and listened, thinking of my dad and the weekend. As the songs played — even Yoko sounds a little better in the “Stripped Down” incarnation — I regretted briefly not making the walk on the beautiful fall day. Then I looked at my daughters — Emma napping on the passenger’s side, Kate sitting in the back looking at the laptop — and realized I had been where I needed to be all along.

Nobody told me there’d be days like these.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these.
Strange days, indeed.