A Night Out with the Local Italian Supermodels

"Too many gardens I've seen seem to express only one mood or one state of being. There is a dependence, a reliance on the effectiveness, let's say, of a single color, as though it were the only state of being that corresponds with one's concept of the beautiful."

--Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, p. 75


Last night my neighbor and her singer-songwriter sister took me out to hear Kris Delmhorst at One Longfellow Square. My neighbor bought me a ticket as a way of saying "thanks" for therapeutic massage received in the days before the birth of her son. The work helped her sleep and forget for an hour that she was pregnant and she felt grateful, so she offered me a ticket to hear live music. How cool!

Now, let me point out that my neighbor and her sister both look like supermodels. I'm not kidding. Long, classically gorgeous, Italian-American. And smart. And sweet. And ten years younger than I am. So going out on the town with them makes it really easy to pretend that I, too, look like an Italian supermodel. That the dozens of guys staring at us along the way are actually staring at me, too.

But the best part of going out with these two is that it's incredibly fun. One of them is always doing something or saying something that makes the other one break down in hysterical laughter.

I'd always wanted to set foot in One Longfellow--they get all the good folkies touring the northeast--and the show turned out to be great. Kris Delmhorst is gutsy, bluesy, original, an excellent poet with words and strings. She played by herself, and had forgotten her performance clothes, and so was wearing her "mommy shirt" that had food on it. I felt right at home. She blew our doors right off with that voice coupled with all that presence. Like really there. Totally in the moment.

And we did get stared at, and it was fun.