Serendipity

Serendipity: 1. a gift or talent for accidentally finding the perfect solution or making a happy discovery; 2. lucky coinciding of events; 3. an orange-blend shrub with a sweet fragrance...

My computer has been giving me a lot of trouble lately. Weird stuff happening. Some text on the screen appearing larger not just than usual, but than other text on the same page at the same time. Programs supposed to be running but not. Freezing. Error messages from out of the blue telling me I don't have a mouse.

Yesterday it got bad enough that when I got out of work I went straight to Best Buy, and was this close to pulling out the old charge card and bringing home a brand spankin' new computer. This thing is still running Windows 98, for crying out loud.

But I had to decide between two brands, different power levels, and different packages of extras.

So I called my son, the architecture major, at college. He had been home a couple of weeks ago on spring break, and had sat at the kitchen table with his laptop working on drawings, and his set up was very impressive. I thought for sure I'd get good advice from him.

First thing he said was a reminder that we need to replace at least three windows in the house, along with accompanying woodwork and shingling. Then he said a couple of cautionary things about his younger brother, still at home, and his computer usage.

Good, solid advice, indeed.

I decided to wait and try a few other remedial options on the computer. As I drove home, the persistent freezing and "no mouse detected" message tumbled around in my mind, and I thought just for the heck of it I'd plug in an old but still functioning mouse and see what happened.

The old mouse fixed the problem.

It hasn't always been the case that my son was providing the reliable information and the computer was acting up. In the past few years it's sometimes been quite the opposite. 

What a dazzling thought it is, to have a son well grown.

The new old mouse allowed me to get back online and access a favorite message board, where among the recent offerings has been a tag-like game involving music lyrics. The last post required somebody to come up with song lyrics which included the word "young." Well, that's easy. 

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

That brought an almost immediate comment from someone who loves the song, and it sent me in search of a YouTube video of Bob singing it. (Fred Bals, look what you have wrought.) I easily found the video of Bob playing the song on "Late Night With David Letterman" in 1993. 

The song played right into my heart, and what I was thinking about my son, grown but still young. "It was an important statement for [Dylan]," writes biographer Clinton Heylin, "an attempt to write something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke to the father in him." Dylan said of it, "I wrote [it]...thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental. The lines came to me, they were done in a minute....the song wrote itself." (Robert Hilburn, "Bob Dylan: Still A-Changin,' in Dylan Companion, quoted in Bob Dylan and Philosophy, p. 185)

Well, I sat watching his Letterman performance over and over again on my perfectly running computer with its new old mouse, offering up every line as a prayer for my son. I nearly sent him the link, but wasn't confident that serendipity would extend over four events instead of the charmed three. Like Bob, I didn't want to be too sentimental.  

Somewhere I've read about the significance to his career of Dylan's Letterman "Forever Young" performance. I've searched high and low tonight and can't find it. In the end, it doesn't matter. It's my serendipity, not his. But it's just one more of the many ways his voice amplifies little moments of my life.