A Date with Dad and Other Wonderful Adventures

I remember seeing an Adventures in Odyssey album (a radio drama series) entitled A Date with Dad and other Calamities. I have never listened to it in order to discover if that was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or not, but I must say that it has always made my blood boil! Last night, I was reminded again how I treasure spending time with Papa when Mikaela and I had a most wonderful date with our dad.

The beautiful evening began almost as soon as we were driving off. Someone glanced up at the rainy horizon and saw there, stretching across the sky, a double rainbow! For the next few minutes we were all spellbound as we stared at God's double reminder of His promise! After running a few errands we headed off to the Olive Garden for dinner. In a large family, one-on-one time with Papa is a treat, and we had a wonderful time catching up over pasta and salad. We were on a mission, though, because we had tickets to see Itzhak Perlman perform with the Oregon Symphony. (For those of you who don't know who he is...poor people...he is almost unarguably the greatest living violinist.) Therefore, we did have to slurp our pasta quickly.

While we were eating dinner, we mentioned to our waitress that we were going to this concert. She had a very interesting reaction. "Oh," she said. "That sounds like the kind of concert that you would come away from refreshed and...well, edified. Most concerts you leave and you're just exhausted and drained, you know? But that sounds like something that would really refresh you." Our waitress was quite the astute observer, not to mention a great balancer of plates.

All right, now here is where things begin to get exciting. We had just enough time to make it to the concert hall in Portland, but of course it could not be that simple. We had to make memories! We missed our exit, but finally got back on track with me as co-pilot. Whew! We could not find a parking spot, but finally settled for the garage. We ran up to the will-call booth, relieved that we had made it, only to discover that our tickets were not there for some reason. No worries, the customer service table wrote us out new ones. We finally found our seats in the sold-out concert hall with five minutes to spare and wondered, "Now where's that refreshment and edification?"

When Itzhak Perlman finally limped out on his crutches (he had polio as a child and cannot walk without them), everyone leaped to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. It was a very emotional moment, and I still cannot believe that I was able to see this amazing man in person.

For the next two hours, I can honestly say that I did not think about wrong turns, Barack Obama, the recession, my to-do list, or my messy closet. We all just listened with joy and awe to the lilting music. Today it's back to leftovers, dark circles under my eyes from last night, baby-sitting two-year olds, and messy closets. But do you know what? When you had a date with your dad last night, that stuff really doesn't matter anymore.

Note: The top photo is of me, Papa, and Mikaela last year. The photo of Itzhak Perlman is from performingarts.ufl.edu. We didn't get a photo of us and Itzhak Perlman, although there's always Photoshop... (-: