On the morning of Saturday, February 10th, my sons trained at their Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio, then were summoned by their father to Wilmington Hospital. Mom had been there for a week. Dad had been a rare sight. They were in their gis, cuter and stronger than any children I know. I sat them down on a bench outside their mother’s room. I confirmed that they understood how sick Mom was. I told them that she would probably not survive this. Hugs and crying. We were then in the currents of things we could not control. Their mother, Mary, would pass into the hands of God two days later.
We can’t control this moment, but we can plan the next. In that hallway I cooked up a road trip. “This will be a beginning,” I said to myself. Nothing radical. We were campers and festival goers already. The Delfest lineup was perfect. As littles, the boys had seen Rhiannon Giddens as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Appel Farm Arts and Music Festival in 2012.
Six years later (essentially their whole lives), they’d get to see her again in all her iconoclastic-americana-irish-opera-fusion glory. I didn’t cry, but got pretty damn close to what might be called “crying.” My sons loved it and we had our first night together in a tent as the Zerbey Three.
