Meeting Dar

A couple of weekends ago we celebrated our 34 wedding anniversary. We decided no gifts to one another but did plan to go to a couple of concerts. The first concert was on Friday night at 10:00PM in the chapel of a university in the next town. The campus experienced a tragic murder a few weeks ago where one of the college students was gunned down as she worked in the college cafe and bookstore. She was being stalked by an acquaintance who found out where she went to school. Dar Williams, the folksinger, is an alumni from the school and came back to do a benefit concert in honor of the student and to raise money for her scholarship fund.

Dar performed there just back in March and we had a wonderful time, so we decided to go and see her again and support the cause. Since seeing Dar a couple of months ago, I had been playing her music almost daily and discovered a wonderful song called, The One Who Knows. My son and I decided that we would use the song for the mother and son dance. It was in my mind to be able to share that with Dar and I had considered trying to write or email her, but hadn't made the effort. So I was hoping that I would get to meet her that night and tell her. I felt it was a good omen when she closed the show by introducing the song saying that she does not usually sing the song for groups of college students, but that particular night since it was graduation weekend and the audience was full of parents she would sing...The One Who Knows.

I was so excited as I never heard her perform it live. Well, lo and behold, after the concert she came out and I did get to speak to her and tell her we had picked out that song for our mother and son dance. She said a couple of people had told her that they used the song, but it was for the father and daughter dance. We were the first, that she knew of, to use it for the mother and son dance. She then said that I had done a good job of raising my son if he was touched by that song. It made me feel good. Of course my husband was standing right next to me and I did not give him one ounce of credit! LoL. We both tried hard to raise our sons with a great deal of heart and tried to counter act all the macho hype that society tries to put onto men.

So it was very cool to tell Dar Williams that we were using the song, and so touching to hear her perform it. We were lucky we got to see her again so soon, although under such sad and tragic circumstances.