A birthday card, the moon, and Axl Rose

On my way home from work yesterday I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things (bread, tea, juice) and to get a birthday card for my father. I’d already looked for a card in three other stores and hadn’t found one I liked. I was anticipating having to look through every card in the rack, again not finding one that I liked, finding two that were okay, endlessly vacillating between them, and all in all spending way too much time in the card aisle and not even being satisfied in the end. That’s pretty much every card-buying experience I’ve ever had.

Instead of that, though, I went to the card aisle and the very first card I picked up was exactly the one that I wanted. Somewhat stunned, I got the other things that I needed, not even minding so much that they were out of my usual bread, and left the store.

Outside the sun had set and it was cold, but not frigid. The now-familiar tang of piñon smoke came to me across the hazy twilight. I inhaled deeply, then looked up through the bare branches of the cottonwood trees and was gobsmacked by the sight of the huge, nearly-full moon rising over Sandia Peak. I put my grocery bag down and just stood there, watching the moon until it disappeared behind a low-hanging cloud.

Then I went to my car, and when I started it up I was just in time to hear the opening riff of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” on the radio. You know, Guns N’ Roses had a checkered career both musically and otherwise, but at their best they were one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet, and “Sweet Child” is GN’R at their absolute best. I fucking love that song, man. And it was the album version, not the radio edit, so for six minutes I sat in my car totally rocking out and not caring if the people passing by thought I was weird or insane. Then I went home.

I just want to thank the Universe for handing me that short span of time in which things were really good.