Yeah That Was Me Singing In the Safeway Parking Lot

Photo by israel palacio on Unsplash

It’s two days ago, Tuesday December 20, in the late morning, and I don’t really know why, but I’ve been anxious all day.

Family are flying in this afternoon, and I’m wanting everything to be just right for them. But I haven’t even started my holiday shopping yet, either for gifts or groceries, and guys are at our place delivering propane for the backyard tent we’ll have up for two weeks, and we don’t even have a Christmas tree yet. Just a lot going on. Plus the fact that yesterday I flew out to Chicago and back for the funeral of a dear friend’s father, and this morning as I tried to brainstorm tonight’s dinner for a table of out of town family, I realize I haven’t cooked like this in months because it’s been a super busy fall and I wonder if I even remember how.

Okay. Now that I’ve spelled some of it out, I guess I know the source of my anxiety.

So I’ve made my grocery list and checked it twice. Not just for tonight but for tomorrow when we’re doing a huge Hanukkah meal and Dan’s grandma’s matzoh ball soup is the featured centerpiece of the meal and contains about fifteen ingredients and takes a day to make. Also on the menu are Dan’s aunt’s famous latkes. Also Dan’s grandma’s applesauce. What I’m trying to say is that Dan’s on deck for the meal tomorrow night, which means that today I’m the grocery shopper for what I’m making tonight and all that goes into tomorrow’s Hanukkah extravaganza.

I’ve already been to the speciality grocer and now I need the basics from Safeway in Mountain View. I pull my Jeep Wrangler into a spot in the parking lot and as I turn off the engine, I hear music in the air. It’s electronic, amplified, but also live. Someone near here is producing live music at a Safeway on a Tuesday in late December. It piques my curiosity. It nudges me to feel delight.

I slip out of my car, careful not to let my door bang into the door of the car I’ve parked next to, haul my sack of cloth bags behind me like a mini Santa Claus, hit the pavement and click the lock button on my key fob. Thirty feet ahead is a man posted up on the edge of the lane that runs alongside the Safeway. He’s playing an electric guitar and he’s got a sign that reads, “I have 3 kids help me to pay bills, rent, food Venmo ADR3473.” He presses and strums the strings to Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The sounds of an entire jazz combo come out of the amplifier and into the Tuesday air.

Beyond him, I see another man, a shopper it seems, bopping in the street as he heads toward Safeway’s main entrance, gently dipping his shoulders and bending his knees, and singing along to the guitar man. But the singing man is almost at the store entrance now, so the guitar man is about to lose his audience.

I feel an urgent pang of loss for the guitar man.

So I open my mouth and carry the tune loud, really loud, so that not only the guitar man will hear me, but the singing man might hear me too, and he does. He spins around and his face lights up with a smile and bops back onto the street toward me and the guitar man.

The singing man has a gorgeous voice and we come together and elbow bump and dip our bodies as if pre-arranged, as if we have known each other for a lifetime. He and I evoke both Judy Garland and Stephanie Mills, finding the harmony to the other’s melody, gently swirling our voices up and out into this beautiful Tuesday, dancing our bodies gently around each other to the music of the guitar man on a lane outside a grocery store. The guitar man is suitably stunned, and just runs with it.

When the song is over, we all introduce ourselves. The guitar man is Adrian and he’s from Romania. The singing man is Bernard, a jazz singer who lives in East Palo Alto. Bernard suggests Fly Me to the Moon, I look up the lyrics on my phone, and Adrian strikes up the band. Someone drops money in the little box at Adrian’s feet. And someone else. And someone else.

Adrian plays a few more songs. Bernard keeps saying he needs to go but keeps circling back around for the next lyric. Together we reach for the tune and the harmony and the lyrics and the laugh. Adrian gets a few more donations.

Finally, the tasks of the day overtake the joy of making music with strangers. Bernard and I wish Adrian well and walk off toward the Safeway together. I tell him I’m a newly elected city councilmember in Palo Alto and ask does he do live gigs because and I’m looking to bring some more live music to our street corners. He says absolutely. That he can pull together a combo on a moment’s notice. I ask for his email. He gives it to me. I tell him I’ll be in touch. I look him in the eye and tell him I really will.

Bernard turns to me at the main door of Safeway. Puts his hands on my shoulder and says, “This was God. I needed this.” He says things are hard right now. He’s got an eighty-four year old mother at home and he needs to get his shopping done but he really needed this today. I nod and smile and tell him I needed it too.

Call it God, call it the Universe, call it serendipity, call it coincidence. Three strangers came together late on a Tuesday morning and for a few moments made everything alright. Maybe for even longer.

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📸 Cover Photo Credit: israel palacio/Sunsplash