Wednesday night I had a good row.

This isn’t always the case.

A good row isn’t always possible because of things outside your control—the weather, first and foremost.  You can steel yourself against heat and cold, but if the river is choppy and there’s white caps on the wakes, you’re going to spend the whole time just trying to stay upright.

Same if there’s heavy wind.

Then there’s your crew.  If you’re rowing with someone who’s significantly better than you, you might have a hard time keeping up.  With someone less experienced, you’ll have to hold back.

Sometimes it’s the boat—the oars are rigged too high, or you’ve positioned your footplate too far away.  

Then there are things within your control that can disrupt a row—maybe you had a bad day at work and you’re not able to leave it on the shoreline.  Or you’re tired, or you’re hungry, or you’re just not in the mood.

Sometimes, all the external and internal conditions are perfect, and it’s still hard.  You feel like you’re dragging the boat every damn meter, and all your adjustments make everything worse.

And then sometimes—like Wednesday night—it’s effortless.

Wednesday started off precariously—the high school rowing practice went long, forcing us to start late.  There’s always chaos when one group is coming in as another is going out. 

I’d been irritated by the normal grind of my workday, and as it had been forecasted to rain, I worried that we’d end the row soaking wet and further annoyed.  In the fray of the boat change, I’d forgotten to adjust my equipment to my height.

I’d also forgotten my water bottle.

My doubles partner Beth is at the tail end of a long recovery from shoulder surgery, so she wanted to take it easy.

That worked for me.

Then we got out on the water and everything changed.

The late summer was heavy and humid, but I didn’t feel it.  We were in near perfect sync, and we were working hard, but it didn’t feel like it.  The needed equipment adjustments didn’t matter. 

I was relaxed.  My mind was floating.  The petty cares and worries evaporated.

And yet somehow we were having one of the best rows of my life.  We kept up with bigger boats and stronger rowers.

When I realized it, I got back into my head—I started to try.

“Relax,” Beth said.  “Don’t pull.”

Don’t ruin the flow, she meant, and she was right.  We were dancing with grace, and I was about to push and ruin it.

I backed off.

I’d been about to make the simple hard.

Instead we glided into a postcard-perfect sunset.

Afterwards, I felt spent and satisfied and fulfilled.

I slept like a rock that night.

A good row is like a good day at work, or a good piece of writing, or a good conversation—undemanding instead of grinding, smooth instead of awkward, unexpectedly deeper than our normal superficial days and interactions.

I wish I could tell you exactly how we did it, but I can only say that sometimes the muse finds you.

If only you could bottle it and sell it—or make an app to call it up at will on your phone.

But until someone does, we’ve just got to recognize these moments and appreciate them when they come.

I’m not an expert on the multiverse.  I do know it’s different from the metaverse, which as far as I can tell is just people running around with huge virtual reality goggles on pretending they’re at the beach when they’re actually walking down the street in a snowstorm.

Or it might be living in the internet.

I’m not sure.

But it doesn’t matter, because we’re here to talk about the multiverse, which, as best I understand, is a scientific theory that postulates that there are multiple universes.  All the various parallel universes that you could exist in live within the multiverse.

It also has something to do with the Marvel superhero movies, but we’ll leave that alone for now.

All this talk of the multiverse got me thinking as I spent the week watching the coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s death and the national mourning in Britain. 

So let’s explore some alternative universes, shall we?

Many of this week’s tributes refer to Elizabeth II as The Accidental Queen. 

When her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 so he could marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, the crown passed to his brother Bertie, who became King George VI (as depicted by Colin Firth in The King’s Speech).  When he died in 1952, the crown passed to his twenty-five year old daughter Elizabeth.

And thus began the longest reign in history.

If Edward VIII had not abdicated, the crown would’ve passed to his children.

But here’s the thing—he never had any.

So the ultimate result would’ve been the same—upon his death, his niece Elizabeth would’ve taken the throne.

Elizabeth II was not an Accidental Queen.  Her father was an Accidental King.  As Edward VIII outlived his brother, Bertie is the one who never would have reigned if Edward VIII had done his duty.

Edward VIII’s abdication stole two decades of freedom from Elizabeth II and Philip.  Two decades when Philip could’ve completed his military career, two decades out of the spotlight, and two decades where she could’ve given her children more attention.

In this multiverse,  Elizbeth II becomes Queen in 1972 at the age of 46 and still manages to reign for half a century. 

In the long arc of history, this is barely a blip. 

But it would’ve made quite a difference, I’d say, to Elizabeth Windsor and Philip Mountbatten.

Imagining these alterative universes in the multiverse is fun, isn’t it?

Let’s explore another.

If you were one of the 750 million people watching Charles and Diana’s wedding on July 29, 1981, surely you thought of the day we witnessed last Thursday, when Elizbeth II’s crown would pass to the next generation.  (As a lifelong royal watcher, of course I watched Charles and Diana’s wedding.  I was 35 days old, but I watched it from the crook of my mother’s arm.)

So let’s go digging around in the multiverse and pull out the universe where Charles put aside his feelings for Camilla.  Instead of forcing Diana to live in a marriage that was “a bit crowded,” he committed himself to making what was essentially an arranged marriage work.

The universe where the Queen and the rest of the family supported the young and naïve Diana, and found a way to coexist.

A universe where Charles learned to love his wife, and to be proud instead of jealous of her beauty and the world’s adoration.  A universe where things didn’t get so out of hand, where they never divorced.

A world where Diana didn’t die at 36 in a horrific car wreck at the hands of the paparazzi.

In my multiverse, the fairy tale promised that day in July 1981 comes true.

Imagine last Saturday with Charles taking the oath to become King with a still radiant sixty-one year old Diana beside her husband.

Imagine the People’s Princess becoming the People’s Queen.

No one would be calling for Charles to abdicate in a rush to get to the reign of William and Kate.

The Fab Four of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan would’ve never ruptured—Diana simply wouldn’t have allowed it.

You may tell me there couldn’t possibly be a universe like this.

You may tell me I have no understanding of what the multiverse actually is.

You’re probably right on the first, and definitely right on the second.

But scientists say that the number of universes in the multiverse is literally “humungous.”

So why can’t Diana still be alive and married to Charles in one of them?

In that multiverse, tomorrow they will mourn Queen Elizabeth II.

Then they will turn to the future and say, “Long Live Queen Diana.”

The first time I saw New York’s Twin Towers in a textbook, my heart stopped.

My best friend’s kids were showing me their history textbooks for the upcoming school year, and when I flipped through to the very end, there was a brief section on 9-11 that included a photograph of the Twin Towers.  (The photograph wasn’t from 9-11; these were elementary school kids.  They didn’t show them burning or falling.)

And I looked at the kids and realized that for them, 9-11 was history.  They weren’t born 21 years ago on that violent and awful day.

They could read about it in a book, but they could never understand.

They weren’t there.

I was a junior at Penn State and watched the whole thing unfold on a movie screen in the student center, surrounded by students as dazed and confused as I was.

In the days and weeks and months that followed that moment, the world—and life itself—felt uncertain and unsettled.

“In a time of particular uncertainty…” they would say on the news.

They said the same thing during the early days of the pandemic.

But the idea of “a time of particular uncertainty” is a myth we tell ourselves, because the most cursory reading of history shows that every moment is uncertain.  And every untimely death to one close to us reminds us that no one is promised tomorrow.

Or even today.

Events like 9-11 or the pandemic throw that stark reminder right in your face and don’t allow you to look away.

I started this post by writing that Nina’s kids couldn’t understand because they read about 9-11 in a book.

But the truth is, though I lived through it live, I watched 9-11 on a television screen.  I called everyone close to me and they picked up the phone.

I could never understand.

I wasn’t there.

And what of the ones who were there, in the belly of the beast?

Who died in terror in the towers that day?  Or the ones who survived?  Or the ones in New York who watched the smoke and flames as the once tallest buildings in the world crumbled in a day.

Or the fire fighters and the police who ran toward disaster while everyone else ran away?

They were there.

Do they understand?

I don’t see how they could.

Never Forget, we say.

To me, that’s not a cry for revenge or a warning to hide under your bed from the terror of the world.

It’s a reminder that 9-11 is part of our collective American history now—as much as Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag, or the Gettysburg Address, or the assassination of JFK.

A reminder that the world is full of heroes and villains, and that every generation must fight to preserve the ideals of peace and justice against the forces of evil that live in the human heart.

So we put 9-11 in our textbooks, we mark where it happened as sacred ground, we document it in museums and grapple with it in art.

We didn’t have to be there.  We don’t have to understand.

We just have to remember.

As best I can remember, I’ve been a fan of Matt Nathanson since around 2003.  He’s an American singer-songwriter who’s got twelve studio albums and a rabid cult following, but he’s never hit mainstream radio.  This is partly by choice, as he made one album for a major label in 2003 called Beneath These Fireworks, but decided that he wanted to remain independent and retain more control over his music.

If you know him at all, it’s likely because of the country duo Sugarland.  They covered his song “Come on Get Higher” on their 2008 album Love on the Inside.  Two years later they recorded the duet “Run” that appeared on Nathanson’s Modern Love album.  Sugarland and Matt Nathanson sang it live at the 2010 CMA Awards.

I’ve seen Nathanson half a dozen times over the years, starting at the now defunct Rex Theater in Pittsburgh, a casualty of the pandemic.  He’s energetic and puts his heart and soul into every performance.

But this is the story of the song he wouldn’t sing. 

In 2008 he recorded a song called “Bulletproof Weeks” on his Some Mad Hope album.  It’s a breakup song—the kind of breakup that leaves scars that never quite heal.  I know I saw him tour Some Mad Hope, and I can’t remember if he sang “Bulletproof Weeks” back in 2008.

But by 2015, he was touring his new album Show Me Your Fangs, and he when he solicited requests from the audience, someone called out “Bulletproof Weeks.”

It’s a great song, and I wanted to hear it.  But he got a look on his face, and he said quite candidly that he didn’t sing that song anymore because it was too painful.

And so we all moved on, and I figured I’d never hear “Bulletproof Weeks” live again.

But there’s a final plot twist.  In my first concert since the pandemic, I saw Matt Nathanson last Thursday night at the Homestead Carnegie Library and Music Hall, the same venue I saw him when he declined to sing “Bulletproof Weeks.”

It was a tour that was celebrating the 15^th anniversary of Some Mad Hope.  He told the story of each song on the album as he sang them.  The album was primarily the true life retelling of a torrid affair he had in 2005 that ended badly and nearly wrecked his marriage.

He said that back then he was a narcissist and an asshole, and believed he couldn’t change.

“But that was a long time ago,” he said. 

And then he played “Bulletproof Weeks.”

As best I can tell (since he’s quite private about his personal life on the internet) he’s still married to the same woman and they now have a twelve-year old daughter.

He changed when he thought he couldn’t, his wife forgave when she probably thought she couldn’t, and I heard a song live I never thought I’d hear again.

When does a story end?  How does it end?  Are you at the end?

You just never know.

Last week I read that white noise machines are they key to restful sleep.  The author was spouting off all the conventional sleep hygiene advice—consistent bedtime, black out curtains, and lowering the temperature.

The white noise machine is also conventional advice, but this guy was all in on it, boldly proclaiming that you “weren’t even trying” to get good sleep if you didn’t use one, and ordering everyone to try it that very night.¹

I’m lucky that as a general rule I don’t have trouble sleeping (the book was actually about writing, and went off on this tangent into the importance of sleep) but he convinced me to give it a try.

That night I carried my Alexa into the bedroom and told her to play a sound labeled “rain on a tent”—not technically white noise, but I always sleep best when it’s raining.  As soon as the sound came on, Blinker’s ears pinned back as she looked around in terror. 

She raced from the room.

I figured she’d be back.  I’ve had Blinker since December 2017, and every night since then she’s slept in bed with me, usually right on my chest.

No doubt she’d get used to the unfamiliar noise and come back into the room.  After all, she’s heard real rain before.

As for me, the rain sounds worked brilliantly—at first.  I was completely out in minutes.

But I was restless—and a few hours later, I woke up with the feeling something was wrong.  I glanced over at the clock—3 a.m.

The fake rain was still raining.  The room was nice and cool.  The pillows were soft.

Everything was perfect.

But no Blinker.

I got up and searched for her.  I found her downstairs all huddled up in the corner of the living room.  When she saw me, she slinked out and started a pathetic little cry.

I didn’t need to speak cat to know she was asking me why I let the monster sound chase her from the bedroom.  I tried to get her to come upstairs, but she wouldn’t budge.

Instead, I returned and turned off the rain maker.  I went back to look for her, but she met me halfway up the stairs, a little bounce in her step.  She peered around the room, and when she was assured the monster making the noise had been banished, she jumped up on the bed.

I laid back down with no rain, no white noise, just a kitty who climbed on me like always and purred and purred and purred with gratitude over the restoration of our routine.

Together again.

We both slept like babies.

We will never speak of the white noise machine again.

¹For those wondering, the book in question was “Someday is Today” by Matthew Dicks.