Of No Shoes, Shoestrings & Kinky Boots

 My son has been back with us in his hometown for several months now after living 1400 km away for over 5 years. Yay! I'm thrilled but the irony isn't lost on me that now, when we can actually physically celebrate our birthdays together, he has a job that takes him out of town half of the time. And that half of the time just happens to fall on his birthday next week. So tonight we celebrated his birthday together and went out for dinner then to see a show. His choice for dinner: Shoeless Joe's, a new chain in town. My son enjoyed his meal and I enjoyed our shared appetizer (buffalo cauliflower) but was disappointed with the actual dinner I ordered--fish and chips--even though I had doused it in malt vinegar (yum! I used to drink it straight from the bottle as a young girl in Britain!). Chips? Hardly. The skinniest shoestring fries I've ever seen. No match for the onslaught of malt vinegar.  Oh well, it's just food, just a restaurant (noisy and full of huge TV screens all on different sports channels, one of the TVs right beside us in our half booth), I reminded myself, focusing instead on being with my son and the absolute normality of this these past few months yet still that knowledge of the preciousness of our time together too. 
​We chatted about all kinds of things. Our talk turned to the recent tragedy of the Humboldt Broncos hockey players, especially a horrific mistaken identity which occurred. For a couple of days, one family thought their son had been killed while another family thought their son had lived when in reality, the reverse was true. It moved us both to tears. Some things are unimaginable. 
Luckily the show we were going to see, Kinky Boots, promised to be upbeat although its message  about being true to oneself is serious. My son had seen the show years ago and we had both watched the movie. I was ridiculously excited to be able to see it with him. Despite a technical difficulty about 15 minutes in where the show was interrupted for 10 to 15 minutes and we heard a drill hard at work behind the curtain, the show was excellent, the singing and dancing superb. I can't get enough of the show's final song, Raise You Up/Just Be with its catchy uplifting tune and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper. It had the entire audience on its feet, dancing and clapping.
​The perfect seal on what is now, a memory to treasure.

---