The Little Things

Never take a baby to a rock concert.

I assume this will be obvious to most readers, but apparently it wasn't to The Lady, or to me. In our defense, it was Billy Joel. (If you've ever headbanged to "Piano Man," you can stop reading now). 

My wife's favorite performer was playing Wrigley Field. Just because we had given birth to a little girl 4 months before, didn't mean we would skip out on the chance to see her fellow Lawn Guylander in concert. So in August of 2015, while our oldest 4 children were with a babysitter, we drove into the city for our first date since our daughters had come home from India.

A few minutes into Gavin DeGraw's hard-rocking opening act, we realized two things. First, Little Town was not fully appreciating DeGraw's pop/rock catalog. And second, if we kept her in the stadium, with her delicate little ears, she might never appreciate the genius of U2. Or Stryper. So for the remainder of the concert - Billy Joel was only slightly lower in volume - we took turns sitting in the bleachers with my sister-in-law, and wandering around the outer levels of the Friendly Confines.

Of course, the sight of a man with a baby at a rock concert spawned plenty of comments. "First, Billy Joel concert, huh?" was the most common. I usually just smiled and nodded; in hindsight I should have said, "Yes, but we took her to see Pearl Jam last week." 

But a few people - at least 5 of them - walked up to me, fawned over Little Town, asked me all about her and my family, and told me about their families. They even asked to hold her. None of them pointed out that I shouldn't have brought her in the first place (which I'm sure took some restraint). None of them knew, upon approaching me, that we had also adopted 4 children. Many of them were there because they were working at Wrigley Field that night. 

All of them were Black women.

I still don't know exactly what to make of that fact – except that one thing my international experience has taught me, is that it is often the little spontaneous things that reveal the most about people and their culture.