Everything I Need To Know I Learned from Rock & Roll

In some ways, tour is anarchy—the boys are up late dancing to crazy loud rock music, giving each other dinosaur tattoos with face paint, and smuggling forbidden Fruit Loops into their bunks. They spend their days scootering around parking lots, chatting up the other bands, riding questionable attractions in sketchy roadside amusement parks. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of their micro-managed urban lives at home. We’ve seen a lot of fascinating, educational stuff, like the Atlanta Aquarium and the Boston Tea Party ships, but the road is rife with wild cards. Already we’ve been on a New Orleans ghost tour that wound up stopping at a former brothel. “What’s a brothel?” Well, son...But within the atmosphere of heightened chaos, I believe the kids are learning valuable life lessons in a unique and memorable way. Here are the top three:

1. THE SHOW MUST GO ON

There are no sick days in show business. The life of a performer may seem glamorous, but it takes a heck of a lot of grit to get up there night after night. Some nights it’s inexplicably off and disappointing. Some nights it’s so ecstatic and transformative you wish it would never end. Some nights you have the flu, or your girlfriend just broke up with you, or your dog just died. Whatever the case is, you still pin your shoulders back and go out there. And when the curtain opens, if you’re any good at all, you offer your whole heart. It’s a terrific lesson to bring home and apply to school or music or sports or family chores. And later to everything else in life.

2. YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

I like to think I make an effort not to spoil my children, and to instill in them both an awareness of their privilege and an appropriate sense of the value of things. In reality, we live in a world with a million choices and I say yes more than I should. I try not to capitulate to tantrums, but I do sometimes just give them a corn dog if they won’t eat dinner. Or get them those Pokemon cards for no good reason other than it makes them smile. Or give them an extra 15 minutes of screen time because I want to talk on the phone. I stock our house with all their favorite crackers and bath products and the right color play doh, and while they certainly don’t get everything they want they sure do get a lot.

Tour is not that kind of environment. They may not carry just exactly the right kind of animal cracker in Duluth. You may leave Tigey in a hotel room and never get him back. You may have to wait until the stop at Grandma’s house to get the paint refills for the spinart. Mommy may leave your favorite bedtime book on the bus by accident (totally hypothetically) and you may have to make do with Rolling Stone that night. Because tour is NOT ALL ABOUT YOU. It’s a machine with a thousand moving parts, and it’s a miracle it works at all. The reason it does is because everyone involved takes one for the team now and then. Which leads me to…

3. IT TAKES A VILLAGE

There are about 90 people supporting this tour, and every one of them is working their ass off. We so often see the shiny outsides of the world, and don’t always stop to think about how much work goes in behind the scenes.

Tariku gets up early, puts on his own clothes, and goes alone to eat breakfast with the bus drivers still up from safely delivering us to our destination during the night. The drivers are on a mission to get him to try the biscuits and gravy, made by the outstanding caterers—I actually have no idea when they sleep. On his way back he says hello to the crew already setting up the stage. I’m glad the kids get to see the enormous amount of effort that goes this flash of magic that’s over in a few hours, only to be torn down and put up again in the next city.

When you travel in close quarters with a large group of people, you see not just what’s behind the curtain on the stage, but also what’s behind the masks we present to the world. No one can be on their A game 24 hours a day, after 4 show days in a row. You see people putting on their makeup over the printer, losing their cool at the delivery guy, hanging their show clothes out to dry over the handles of a stroller. You catch the most dazzling performer slouching exhausted over a pizza, the cheeriest production assistant walking the hall with a secret grouchy face. There’s an intimacy and a realness to it I deeply appreciate. And I hope they boys are experiencing and appreciating not just the larger organism of the tour “family” but also the solidity of our little unit within it. Learning that we can move and change and have this fluid kind of life and still be together and permanent and safe.

#adoptionislove #birthmomstrong #tourlife #ittakesavillage #adopted #fostercare #adoptionrocks