�And it�s a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that would never heal�

Memory is a most imperfect mechanism subject to wishes and what-ifs, whim and caprice. I�ll tell you my memory of the first time I heard this song with no pretense of subjective validity of time or place, but with pitch-perfect emotional recall.

The time was the early 70�s, the place somewhere outside Chicago at a small dinner theatre-in-the-round, which is now dark. The lighting in the club was dark, as well, and the glasses and plates clinked softly and glamorously. It seemed as though Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner might be seen at the next table and a black and white photo of the event published in a movie magazine from the Eisenhower era. But Frank and Ava were not there. Who was there was a collection of people who appeared to be in attendance because they always went there on Saturday night, and who had no idea what was in store and wouldn�t know, later, how to categorize what it was they had seen and heard and felt.

The stage was sparse. Tom Waits stood leaning upon a lamppost, ala Sinatra, with his hat and chin lowered and his Stacys pointed at me every time the stage revolved. There was his piano, an upright bass played by someone he introduced as a real-life medical doctor, a horn man on a stool, maybe a guitar player. I don�t remember a drum kit, I think the brushes I heard were in my head.

I�d left behind a peninsula, a mother-suddenly elderly, buried a child, abandoned the dream of happily-ever-after, and this song, that night, became the soundtrack of my decathexis and I began my life again.

Deana Goldin, cat, music, food, and book lover, is a psychotherapist in Chicago

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.