I deserve it...? I had a series of misfortunes last year from month 1 to month 12. A bunch of bad things happened... but she lost her brother. I lost a dear friend, but she lost blood. That she qualifies my good time like this is one of the many things I have faced lately that I haven't the brain power to deal with or the words to articulate. There is a secret sadness marked on her heart with her brother's name and yet she and her family are making sure we can leave town for an extended period of time without fearing for our menagerie of creatures; beloved furry and feathery companions.

You deserve it.

I have never deserved anything a day in my life.

I don't know why I think this way. I try to be mindful because I have heard similar declarations from friends and that they don't understand their own worth and that they are deserving of good things... sometimes the amount of sense such statements lack... I want to shake them. Shake sense in to them. Which means someone out there probably wants to shake me for similar reasons.

All I can think of is mirror pieces. Pieces of lots of things. The great shattering. The Tower of Babbel. When everything broke and we were all cast apart as diminished creatures, you ended up with a piece I need. I have the pieces you need, but if you don't talk to me... I'll never know. And vice versa.

I gave her a song.

He gave me books to read that changed my life.

She gave voice to my own ponderings: why isn't anything beautiful anymore? (She makes everything she touches more beautiful. The world is truly a more beautiful place simply by her existence in it.) The cars all the look the same, the buildings all look the same. There are no more great monuments to time and place and humanity in our weird throw away culture.

All of this is to say, human experience is the great unifier... if we let it be.

And we are on tour again. Rental car trouble and a flight change right out of the gate, but we are there.

I tell the nice couple in front of us at the Mucky Duck in Houston last night. Salim? We're with him. All the Texas dates and then? Then after San Antonio, we fly to Philadelphia and keep going with him and Rhett Miller.

I'm not trying to brag. I promise. I am trying to articulate the amazing amount of luck that has lead me to this place on this night (fabulous little venue -- try the shepard's pie with a Princess Peach mocktail... you won't be sorry!)

My husband stirs next to me. He makes some sort of noise of dissent when I say "we" … "we are with them." But we are. I'm not playing pretend like so many years ago where "going on tour" meant being at all the same shows as a certain band who would wave and maybe say my name, "Hi, Liz!" while they went to their air conditioned dressing rooms and I sat outside in the heat... heat... heat... it was always heat. And I wouldn't eat or drink so I could keep my place in line and then when the band finally hit the stage: I'd be so dehydrated, many times I would swoon.

Told the guitar player that once, "I thought that was you!" He smiled. Smiled. That happened. Hit the ground in Austin so many years ago. And no one cared. Especially not the people a younger, more naïve me would have done anything for.

Misplaced allegiance.

No. it's not that way this time.

This time Marty Willson-Piper gets the biggest smile on his face when he sees us. His [beautiful, radiant, wonderful] wife, Olivia, comes to say hello. Salim's friend [powerhouse, force for good, appreciator of cats] Sarah sits with us at our table for a bit. Salim's brilliant guitar player friend, Joe Reyes, tells me it's nice to see me. Salim asks us how we like The Duck.

Salim, infinitely patient, described it to me as a sort of exposure therapy: if I am around good, kind people who like me and want me around long enough maybe I will start to finally believe that is what I deserve.

I truly don't know what I deserve, but I believe Salim and the others when they talk. And I am smart enough to know I am currently living a life others only dream of.

"How do you go on tour, Liz"? I was asked after last time. You go after what you want. You don't give in to fear. I just happened to meet a strange, tall, talented man that radiated vibes of goodness and caring and instead of crawling off in a bush to be intimated as is per my usual, I went after what I wanted: yes, sir, I know we are both adults and therefore this is awkward beyond imagining, but you sing pretty songs that touch my heart. Please be my friend.