Let It Be, Part Two of Two

We walked down the sloping path as Paul McCartney and his girlfriend ambled up in the opposite direction. When I knew we were out of earshot, I whispered to Patrick, “Okay, I need to talk about this.”

“Okay.”

“Did I behave all right?”

“You were fine. Here, Lily,” he said, raising his arms up to her, “Come sit on my shoulders for a while, I think your mommy needs a break.” Lily leaned towards Patrick, and he swooped her up onto his shoulders.

“That was Paul frigging McCartney, Patrick! Aren’t you the least bit excited? I’m practically numb. I’m not sure if I’m smiling or if my feet are even touching the ground.”

“I don’t really get excited about celebrities.”

“He’s not just a celebrity. I could handle that—he’s a Beatle.”

Patrick nodded. “I was impressed at how down to earth he was, and how kind he was to Lily.”

“That’s my point! He was so normal. He picks flowers just like Lily does.”

The dogs chased a rabbit under a low scrub oak, sending a flock of small birds scattering. Lily squealed with delight. Patrick ran ahead with her, trying to scare up more birds.

I lagged behind thinking about how the Beatles’ music was so intricately woven into my memories. I learned “Yesterday” on the piano and during my parents’ divorce, played it over and over. In my adolescence, I learned a dance combination to “Come Together” and performed it so well, I began to take dance more seriously, imagining it as the career it later became.

“Blackbird” was my favorite Beatles song because I always drifted back to an evening in 1979, to New York and a gathering of artist friends at a loft in Soho. Intoxicated on wine and good food, we sat around after dinner and sang “Blackbird” again and again as our host strummed it, badly, on his old guitar. At first we laughed trying to remember the words, but we ended up singing in earnest, moved by the poetry. In time, the AIDS epidemic took many of those friends, leaving me with the hauntingly fitting lyrics to remind me of them:

        Blackbird singing in the dead of night