I got it.
After more than a year of writing full time, I missed the chaos and frustration of media work. I missed problem solving and daily interaction with a variety of people. When it was clear it was time to go back to working for others, I wanted a job with excitement, challenge and, most of all, I wanted meaningful work.
Meaningful work does not pay well, but as the late Harry Chapin used to say, you put your head on the pillow with a "good tired." I plan to be exhausted.
On Monday I join the marketing team of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra as the public relations manager. My late, Polish-born grandmother has got to be skipping among the clouds.
Before I was old enough to go to school, she took me to Kleinhan's Music Hall and told me emphatically the acoustics were among the very best in the world. The young conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, she said, was going places.
I learned later that she was right on both counts, but what mattered to me then was the power of the music and how I could close my eyes and watch the story I believed the instruments were telling.
Neither of us had the scholarship to understand the detail and nuance, only that having this treasure in Buffalo had to make it one of the richest cities in the world.
It wasn't then and it certainly isn't now, but the BPO again has one of the finest conductors of her generation at the helm and Kleinhan's remains an acoustic marvel.
I'm actually excited about introducing my St. Louis-born husband to the building when we go to Saturday night's performance there.
But after a week or so he'll go back home. My daughter Jennine will stay in Georgia where she works and goes to school. My older daughter is getting ready to enter her final undergraduate semester. Until Charlie sells the house, I will be living alone for the first time in my adult life.
Our sweet Smokie dog is very ill and we may not yet have the answers before I leave. That's a lot to put on Charlie's shoulders.
And after months of rallying to get out of this very Southern place, the reminder of the good friends found here resonates.
I've moved enough times to know you get to keep the good ones no matter where you go, but the idea of the weeks turning to months without meeting Rog at KFC or Carol at the corner barstools at Brogen's North or Andy at the other Brogen's or Bobby at anyplace that has good cole slaw -- is sad.
I don't even have the time to do a reprise tour. It's a stark new beginning in an old comfortable place.
The last time I went to Kleinhan's was my freshman year of college for a Harry Chapin concert. It was my first trip home from school and I sat between my mother and my meet-the-new-college- boyfriend.
I had written Harry a letter asking him to play "Tangled Up Puppet," a song about a growing up and away, for my mother. He dedicated it to her from the stage and we both cried in happiness to be there and sadness of what was being left behind.
Exactly the way I feel this morning.




Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs