Handprints

Handprints might seem like a strange topic to discuss, at least at first. But there is a reason for why I am mentioning it here.

Yesterday, in the first blog entry published here, I mentioned that I finally had gotten around to going through some of the boxes of stuff from the old house in West Milford. Well, there were some really cool things unearthed during my cleaning/sorting. That included the two pictures from the published post yesterday. There were some other really cool things, as well.

Yet, one of the absolute treasures that I found while finally going through some boxes of stuff from the old house came as a complete surprise. It was a notebook with my writings from years back which included, of all things, the handprints of my son from when he was still a tiny toddler. In fact, he was still in his "terrible two" phase, although he was a good kid throughout.

The specifics of this handprint were that I was doing my writing on the notebook on the day that he, my then wife, and I were in Québec City on July 20, 2008. Paul McCartney was giving a free concert on the Plains of Abraham, and I had managed to juggle my schedule in the last minute in order to be there.

Glad that I managed to do that, because it almost felt like a magical weekend. It reminded me a little bit of the weekend in 1998 when France won the World Cup, and I was in Paris with my brother (who lived in Paris at the time). First of all, he had managed to get tickets to the semifinal game and offered to take me. I had not been in France in about nine years by that point, and had been meaning to go, especially since he was living there. So I jumped on the opportunity. We enjoyed that game and celebrated, but the entire country was transfixed with the World Cup Final, in hopes that France could win the tournament for the first time ever. They did, in the end. And the entire country just seemed to forget everything, forgot the world of stress and bad news, and just celebrated. We went out into the streets after France's amazing 3-0 victory over Brazil, and it was just celebrations, people honking their cars and masses of people, crowds like you would not believe, filling the streets until the early morning hours. And everyone was just celebrating. I heard that it was the biggest celebration in Paris since the Liberation, and I can believe it.

Well, the McCartney concert in Québec City on July 20, 2008 was a little bit like that. Granted, it was not a sports championship. But it felt like the entire province of Québec was focused on the upcoming concert. It seemed so huge, that it almost felt surreal. I bought a bunch of newspapers over the weekend as souvenirs to remember that magical weekend by, and am glad that I did. Still have them to this day, in fact. It seemed that all weekend long, you kept hearing Paul McCartney and/or Beatles songs on the radio, and everyone was incredibly excited about the concert, in a way that you rarely see a whole community getting excited about things these days. 

So it wound up being a great weekend. It was one of those rare weekends when you could temporarily forget your problems and the general stress of life, and just enjoy. We left on Friday afternoon and got to Québec province in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Left for Québec City in the morning and spent the rest of the day there. We got to our camping grounds, which I remember cost $19 Canadian a night, which was as cheap as you could ask. It was not anything fancy, but what can you expect for $19? It helped to make the entire weekend possible.

Then, it was about relaxing and enjoying ourselves. Visiting the beautiful city of Québec while awaiting the concert. With my son, who was then just two years old, with us, we had to be careful. So we found a spot along the old walls of the city which gave us a view of the stage, and we waited there, not wanting any part of the huge crowd waiting to get inside. Predictably, there was a rush of people racing once they finally opened up the gates, which we avoided. But again, safety was the most important thing. We saw the concert from somewhat of a distance (equivalent to nosebleed seats), but we were there. We saw it. And we saw something that most people that day did not: Paul McCartney's entire warm-up set, which lasted about 45 minutes. Almost a full setlist of music itself!

It was just a fun, fun weekend. And it's funny that something like this find brings so much of that weekend back. I perused a bit through my own writings that weekend, and it was amazing how I could recall some of those memories from nearly a decade and a half ago now!  Someday - I was thinking perhaps for the 15th anniversary of the concert next year, on July 20th - it would probably be good to copy my writings and thoughts from that weekend and publish them here, along with my previous writings and blog entries of that memorable weekend. 

For today, however, I thought it would be good to post these pictures of the handprints from my then not quite three-year-old son. The top picture is of him in the modern day holding up those prints. Seeing the fine young man who he's become sort of paying tribute to his younger self for a weekend that his presence helped make very memorable and pleasant. 

What a weekend! And what wonderful memories!

Here are the pictures of his handprints. Enjoy!

Handprints