Today Luke, Hek, and Tom will all climb aboard separate buses, guitars in hand, and disperse across the country. Luke to Bismarck then Colorado then who knows, Tom to Wisconsin and Hek to Boston. Tomorrow I will return to New York with a 100 pound piano, four full suitcases, and my two daughters. It is the first time in a long time that I am longing to be free.

This afternoon Zoe, my 10 year old daughter, asked me if I could make any wish in the world come true what would it be. I was so surprised. She asked and I drew a blank. I could not think of a wish that I wanted to come true. So I just stood there bewildered and said something lame about money. How could this be when I feel like I have spent the past several years of my life in a constant state of wishes? Making little tiny, detailed wishes to myself every time I saw the numbers on the clock all in uniform. 11:11; ah wish time! Must concentrate and make this one count. So to suddenly find myself at a loss as to what wish I would have come true was such a strange feeling. Perhaps, I thought, I am here, at my wish destination.

Rock and roll will change you. And there is nothing more rock and roll than a tour – regardless of the scale. You cannot help but feel like you are following in the footsteps of all the greats–it is the unspoken feeling in the van between you and your travel companions when you are riding across the highways and interstates of this country. I know the experience is not unique to America, but this kind of travel feels so very American to me. It feels like an outlaw’s life, a cowboy’s life, the life of a musician. There is no routine. There is no work. Nothing remotely mundane about what we did. Every town was an adventure. Every person we met and spent time with felt like a genius and a rebel, living in some exotic place in the middle of the continent, all devoted to doing that indescribable thing that only musicians can do.  The whole journey was so addictive, so mind blowing; traveling and playing music this way felt like such an honest and realistic approach to being alive.

So, how do I return from that? Is this what most working parents go through when they come home? I am primarily a stay at home Mom and don’t feel that conflict between work and family too often. I do my song-writing at home. I had always thought that the bulk of my art occurred in my house, in my daily life. But how do you go out into the world, suddenly cut loose, without your kids, feel yourself practically hovering above the earth you are so light and transient, and then come back? People do it all of the time, I’m sure they do. I’m sure many of the parents I know are by now acrobats in the way they can adapt to these kind of overwhelming transitions. But I’m a little terrified. I don’t want to let all that freedom go. I thought being a Mom was such a wide open world, a perfect haven for creativity and reflection, but I’m worried it cannot quite hold onto this other aspect of life. It feels dangerous–my domestic heart has rediscovered wanderlust.

Though now I feel like I am coming back down to earth. Tomorrow I will walk into my apartment, see my cats, my curtains, unpack, call Una and Carol for a glass of wine, and finally get to fall asleep, exhausted and content, next my sweet little dreaming girls for the first time in weeks. But I will also have with me the image of Luke, Hek, and Tom. You guys, on your buses, with your guitars, walking in a gas station parking lot at night, lighting a cigarette, your thoughts and your secrets behind your eyes, and your rebel hearts totally undecided.The genius thing to do would not be for me to lay there envious and torn between two different lives but to move forward, open my mind, and simply make room for it all.