Although it is more than a bit of a cliche to quote it on my birthday, and my children (and grandchildren, for that matter) will roll their eyes, the song holds a special meaning and significance for those of us of a certain age, born in a certain decade. Forgive us. I am getting old and I am losing my hair. And the rest of the lyrics seem truer than I could ever believe when I first heard Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the teenage retreat we called the Octagon.
I was sixteen, and this particular song was to me then what I assume it was for the Beatles - a harmless, ironic break in the midst of a musical revolution. We were never going to get old. We were certainly never going to settle into a life in which we contentedly dug weeds and knitted sweaters in 4/4 time. Yet here we are, at the other end of life, when the very things we dismissed so many years ago resemble, in fact, our greatest ambition - to spend the rest of our lives enjoying the small stuff with some one we love: '...And if you say the word, I will stay with you.'
I will be sixty-four in a week. I won't need to dredge up the song's words for the occasion because I am living them. Among all of the anthems of our generation, this little ditty is the one, ironically, that has modestly come to pass - not 'Revolution,' not 'Born to Run,' not even 'We Shall Overcome.'
In addition to Sergeant Pepper, I also met John in 1968 - that hurricane of a coming-of-age year. We became best friends and more until I unceremoniously and ungraciously dumped him three years later. But in that precious window, he continued my musical education with introductions to Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane, to Michael Bloomfield, Laura Nyro and Neil Young. Together, we went to concerts, demonstrated against the war, wrote poetry, and declared ourselves unique in the history of the world, uncompromising and invincible. Separately and far less dramatically, we finished school, got jobs, raised families and each gravitated serendipitously and in parallel to the likes of Emmy Lou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Steve Earle.
Alone again some thirty-five years later, I was smart enough to drop John a line the equivalent of 'yours sincerely, wasting away.' Reunited, we are again best friends in the world. He remains the curator of my musical tastes. Literally and metaphorically, he both feeds me and mends my fuses. We happily and gratefully open a bottle of wine, sit by the fire and talk about books and the state of the world. I quilt. We take pictures. We go for rides and quiet vacations on isles and otherwise. He is mine forever more.
And so the song is already lodged in my head as the day draws near. I may not sing it aloud, but if I choose to, I won't apologize. I'm old enough to do what I want and what I want is exactly what I am doing... Now, 'who could ask for more?'