New Year’s Eve Concert

This afternoon, I went alone to the concert. It was the Milwaukee Symphony showing the film Back to the Future and playing the score.

I can’t explain why I wanted to go but I did. Part of it was testing out going places alone.

Many years ago, I went to a two-week course at Harvard. Because, at the time, I had so much trouble being sociable, I spent a lot of time alone, including one dinner in an Italian restaurant where I ate penne pasta with cheese sauce and peas and read a biography of Princess Diana. I remember that dinner down to the last pea. It was lovely. The pasta, the book, the candle flickering on the table, the waiter refilling my glass without having been asked – all of it was luxurious.

I don’t aim to do more things alone. It’s not a goal. But I do aim to not hesitate when going alone is the only way to go. I’ve done that in the past, but only rarely.

Today was a trial run on the solo front.

I sat between two couples who seemed surprised and a little inconvenienced to see me. As usual, I tried to make myself and my accoutrements small so as not to annoy my neighbors. It’s important to me, for instance, that my coat sleeves are in the area of my seat and not overflowing to the neighbor’s. I think about these things and it’s ridiculous. My mother tattooed “Don’t inconvenience others” on my baby forehead and I’ve lived by those words ever since.

In front of me sat an extraordinarily good-looking family – a mom and dad, son and daughter, and grandmother, each of them beautiful, well-dressed, and perfectly coiffed, and I wondered, for only a short minute, if anyone had ever sat behind my family and been awed by our beauty. It is a joke of a question.

I sat in my single seat with my hands folded in my lap. I laughed and clapped and when it was over, I put my coat on and went to the lobby to wait for my ride home.

As it happens, he was already there, outside waiting in our truck. So much for going it alone.