I never grew up a fan. I was more of a Dylan guy. I remember bouncing around on the backroads of my small Maine hometown with the drunken horns of “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” as a soundtrack, dirt swirling behind my Dad’s Ford Ranger as we ran errands. In fact, Dylan was my first live show in middle school. My dad called me in sick to school for the next day so that we could see Dylan pound away at a piano in an arena in central Maine.
I found you in my college days on Staten Island when a clear-eyed truth seeking maniac from New Jersey named Kevin crossed my path. We shared a love for Dylan, but he also started to tell me tales of Asbury Park and its patron saint who would wander there talking to low-lifes, hoodlums, fortune tellers and the disenfranchised. The Bruce that I knew as a belter of anthems on my local classic rock station began to take on a different light. My friend and I would venture across the Goethals bridge for late night disco fry raids to our favorite 24 hour diner, The Peterpank. The bright neon lights shooting light out of the windows like a beacon to us searchers and the other sketchy midnight clientele who would wander over from the strip club next door. The life-eroded waitress would take our order with a scratchy but maternal directness and glide back to the kitchen. We’d listen to Little Stevie’s Underground on the way home and chip away at the big mysteries of life: girls and the swirling ink of the future.
There’s another bind that kept my pal Kev and I together: our enigmatic relationships with our fathers. We spent time combing the recesses of memory and story trying to find clues for our own existence in our shadowy paternal figures. Our relationships with our dads, like many, were rocky and fraught–a mix of formative warm importance and scar tissue. We plunged our Freudian depths with the recklessness of youth. Familial relationships were just as murky and mysterious as what lay ahead.
After college Kevin and I kept close and even moved to Asheville, NC for a short stint. I’ll never forget one epic late-night porch hang with our roommates and some visiting friends where a mysterious bootleg of your early solo demos found their way into the CD player. We sat on the rocking chair porch in the humid Asheville night while a clear-eyed Bruce belted out acoustic-backed songs with a rumbling purpose. It was rocket fuel for the hopeful songwriter that I was at the time. The night hummed with conversation, crickets and your early tunes.
My relationship to your music continued to evolve. I moved abroad and drifted closer and farther and closer and farther from various friends. My relationship with my Dad through that time had similar highs and lows but remained mostly icy. A few conversations on my yearly visit home were all that I could show for the man partly responsible for my very existence. It stagnated into quarterly check-ins when I moved abroad, as did many relationships. I’d come back for holidays hopeful that things could mend, that we could finally connect as men and spill our full stories to each other. I’d always be greeted by that same enigmatic shadow. We’d talk but it just didn’t seem to get anywhere. I’d drive the old familiar roads to see childhood friends who had stuck around feeling the familiar comfort and suffocation that only a hometown could bring.
Time marched forward. I kept making music but also a career as an educator. The mix of progress and realization that many things stay the same. I was abroad for over a decade before I met the woman who would bring me back stateside. And a remarkable woman she is. She made the drive up to Maine for a weekend to see my parents without me. This of course won my mom over instantly, but it also ignited a glow in my dad. He told me about how special she was. Ice began to soften.
I moved back to New England and moved in with that special lady. We continued teaching for a year, learning each other’s ropes. The magic persisted through the challenge of building a life together. We took some trips to Maine and I introduced her to my favorite hometown spots, my local yearly fair, my close friends. We spent Christmas in my childhood home with my parents, arriving just in time for a windy storm to knock the power out. The holiday was spent navigating the old dirt road farmhouse with oil lamps. We talked and played games, faces illuminated by candles. It was one of the best Christmases of recent memory.
The following summer I finally convinced my parents to brave the Massachusetts turnpike and make the three-hour drive to see us. My dad was having nasty hip pain diagnosed as bursitis, but still they packed up their arthritic black lab Moxie and made the voyage for a two-night stay.
On night two, we sat in the morning debating what to do. The Sox had a game but tickets were exorbitant. My wife and I had been to see you play Gillette a few days earlier and had spent much of the show remarking about how much fun my parents would have. They aren’t really ones to go out of the ruts of their routines and an arena show was a special occasion. We floated the idea of a Bruce Springsteen show to my parents. To my surprise, my Dad handed me his credit card and said, “Get some good seats.”
The show was electric. I had never known my Dad to be a fan, but he was locked in. He spent much of the show facing forward, his phone in front of him taking video. Who knows what he did with the footage, but he needed the memory. When the band took a break and the spotlight came onto you for “Last Man Standing,” my special lady nudged me and motioned to my Dad. Emotion was plastered on his face. I think there was even a tear. My Mom was equally locked in and even broke out some dance moves.
In the crowd onslaught of the aftershow, the four of us got separated. I found myself alone with my Dad, navigating the rivers of people streaming to the parking lot. Maybe it was the show that had opened up a tender portal in the moment, maybe it was a little liquid courage, but we actually talked for some minutes while we searched the crowd for our two ladies. Thinking about my own future with my now wife, I asked a simple question that touched on so much mysterious history for me: “Why did you choose mom?” His answer was just as simple: “Because she’s the best.”
My parents drove home the next morning on a stunning August day after snapping a photo of my Dad and I Born In The USA style with our new Bruce shirts on.
Weeks after the show the terrible news came through: the hip pain that my Dad had been battling wasn’t bursitis, it was late stage pancreatic cancer. It seemed like the diagnosis was a catalyst to a decline in health. Within weeks my Dad had to abruptly retire from teaching. I texted him, “Thinking of you.” He replied, “Thanks. Listening to Bruce in patio room. Somehow it’s comforting.”
My siblings and I convened in Maine and set up camp in our family home. Overgrown for our childhood bedrooms, we filled the house. My newborn nephew was a bright soundtrack to the reality that was sinking in. We took turns heading up to my parents’ bedroom to keep my father company. I had a talk with him through tears and we forgave each other.
On the last night my Dad managed to make it downstairs which was rare in the final days. He had a few bites of a burger and then asked for some ice cream. He took slow bites while we watched your Broadway show, his attention locked in as you told the story behind “My Father’s House.” The beginnings of fall were whispering cold licks into the window. After a few more songs he made his way back up to bed.
Shortly after my Dad passed I got married. We put his picture on the mantle so he could watch as we did our first dance to “Thunder Road.” We recently welcomed our first child into the world.. The next generation is starting to take form and my Mom couldn’t be more excited.
Funnily enough I’ve ended up a high school teacher just like my dad. My family is growing and the responsibilities of a full life are expanding. I’m still developing empathy for his story–the grind of responsibilities that a career, marriage, family entail.
I called my friend Kev the other day and we talked for a long time. We reminisced about our time in the tri-state area and Asheville. He gave me advice on fatherhood. We kept exploring that central question of what it means to be a man. I think we’re starting to figure it out.
So, thanks Bruce. Thanks for being a through-line. Thanks for your omnipresent and personal presence. There’s something that resonates in your music that softens and bends people together. You’ve made your search a universal one. We’ll all keep looking.
When I Get Home 