Desperado

My kids and I hit the open road yesterday for a little Midwestern road trip. Very little, as it turned out. Our destination was Dubuque, Iowa, and it only took us 1 1/2 hours to get there from Madison! Still, we heard some good tunes in transit (well I did, while they watched Charlie Brown), including this classic.

While on our bluff walk (see photo), we even saw an eagle, so I decided the signs were pointing at this song to mark our road trip. When we were leaving Iowa, I sent my boyfriend a text to see if he wanted to come over for dinner. I was excited for a reunion and to swap stories about our respective road trips (he'd traveled to Wausau on Sunday), but he said he had to work on getting settled in his new place instead.

I'm not gonna lie, I was disappointed. About not seeing him tonight, but I think more broadly I'm also disappointed that he's getting settled into another new place that isn't with me and my kids. I guess this is just one of those moments when I have to deal with the fact that he's not as ready to settle down as I am.

Yessir, I was the Desperado for a long time, but I'm not anymore:

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out ridin' fences for so long now
Oh, you're a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow

I've always loved this song, and for some reason it's these next two verses that always run through my head for days after I've heard it:

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She'll beat you if she's able
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get

Maybe it's because for so much of my life, I've needed that reminder, but I don't feel I need it any more. It certainly hasn't been a simple matter to carry on a love affair with someone from another part of the country and a world that didn't include kids, but I really believe one of the things that has gotten us this far is that his default gamble is indeed on love. It's helped me believe in it too, and for that I'm grateful.

Still, halfway through our probable lives, we both have a lot of the pain and the hunger of which the Eagles sing:

Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

And our predicament is complicated by the fact that the home that mine drives me to is the one I've made with my beloved children, and the home his drives him to is his beloved mountains.

I don't have the answer to this dilemma, and I'm not in control. And when it comes right down to it, that's a big part of why this is difficult:

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, before it's too late

The other part is, as Harry so aptly puts it (check out this sweet scene!), when you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible!