Red Red Wine

It had been raining all day.

I was visiting my brother for the weekend. My sixteen-year-old niece came home from taking her driver's test. She had been practicing for months, and I knew she was ready. She came upstairs afterward looking like she was trying very hard to hold back tears.

At first, I thought she was just tired.

“How did it go?”

That was all it took.

She had failed. The instructor said she had changed lanes too quickly to make a turn. There was no traffic, and she had done everything else perfectly, including parallel parking. She threw herself onto the bench beside me and cried about failing the test. Then, somehow, failing a driver's test became evidence that she had no friends, no life, hated school, hated everything.

I listened. She became increasingly dramatic. I became a little dramatic with her.

By evening, she was out with her friends at their usual local hangout.

So much for having no friends and no life.

She talks about California a lot. We have family there, and the few times she's visited, she's had a wonderful time. I think she has romanticized it a little — the sunshine, the West Coast culture, the possibility of starting over somewhere new. From the suburbs of Philadelphia, California can seem like another world.

I understand that part.

I went to three different high schools in three different states in four years.

The next day, it was still raining.

My niece was studying for a test, my nephew was gaming with a friend, my brother was at the gym, and my aunt visiting from California was out with friends. Everyone had somewhere to be except me. So I started looking for something to do.

There are always interesting events in a metropolis as big as Philly, and I discovered UB40 was playing at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside.

I loved "Red Red Wine".

By early evening, I was driving through the drizzle toward Glenside, a little town I'd never visited before. The streets were lined with old houses and small storefronts, and despite the rain, there was a little energy in town as people headed toward dinner and the theater. I found myself wishing I had more time to wander around and see what was tucked behind the streets I was passing.

I arrived at the theater and looked at the marquee. It wasn't advertising UB40.

Was I in the right place?

I checked the address. I was.

A few minutes before showtime, I walked inside and bought a ticket at the door. The theater was warm and dim. The house was about three-quarters full, and at first everyone stayed in their seats.

Then the band took the stage.

The singer was young.

And white.

I had always pictured UB40 as a group of Black reggae musicians. I was also pretty sure the singer was supposed to be older. I pulled out my phone and looked them up.

They were English. And the original singer had left the band.

The person next to me probably wondered why I was staring at my phone and laughing hysterically.

Then the music started, and I began recognizing the songs. One I knew. Then another. Then another. Songs reimagined with a reggae sound.

After a couple of songs, the singer looked out at the seated audience and joked that it was okay to get up and dance.

Most of the audience got up, and so did I. I was just another person in the crowd, singing along to songs I'd somehow carried with me for decades without realizing how many of them I knew.

And then came “Red Red Wine.”

Suddenly I was eighteen again, back in my freshman year of college.

My dorm room had a big window opposite the door, with a desk beneath it and a twin bed and a closet at the end of the bed. I remembered the tennis team and the friends I had made. I was on my own for the first time, and my whole life still seemed to be waiting ahead of me.

My own friends. My own life.

Decades later, I was standing in a little theater in Glenside, listening to the same song.

And a short drive away, my niece was waiting out the obligatory seven days before she could retake her driver's test.

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