The mother-daughter concert was months in the making. I purchased the tickets as soon as they went on sale in September for the April event. It was risky, I knew, spending an entire two-week paycheck on tenth-row floor seats with no guarantee that my mom, who has chronic health issues that often keep her housebound (or close to home), would be able to attend. I added a hotel room with two beds, figuring that in a worst-case circumstance, if she couldn't (or wouldn't) go, I might be out a concert ticket, which I could resell online, but not a hotel room.
Getting great seats turned out to be the easy part. The tough part was not letting on that I had them until I surprised her for Christmas or her birthday a month later. The suspense was incessant. Despite, or perhaps because I'd spent a ridiculous amount of money, I was amped up for the concert, but I couldn't say anything even when my mom expressed excitement while reading about it in the local newspaper. (I might have even mentioned it once or twice to gauge her reaction.)
"I'd love to go," she said more than once. "But I couldn't..."
Oh, but you are, I thought (or hoped she would, anyway).
As the fall months slowly ticked by, I decided to prolong my agony by waiting until her January birthday to reveal the secret. When the day arrived, I folded the printed tickets into a greeting card and presented them to her after we'd eaten a celebratory lunch. She was shocked, as expected. Uncharacteristically speechless, as well. (Fortunately she was sitting down.) But she wasn't about to relinquish those tickets, insisting that she'd hold on to them (securing them in her all-purpose safe-keeping drawer), and I reluctantly agreed, equally hesitant to let them out of my sight.
The wait extended for another three months, during which my mom seemed more anxious than excited about seeing Cher. When I tried to make plans for Mother's Day, she insisted that she had "to get through this" first before committing to anything else. I understood, but I was also disappointed by her lack of enthusiasm and concerned that she'd back out in the weeks, days, and hours before showtime.
Finally the rainy Friday arrived. I had to work all day, but we agreed to meet at my place after work and drive to the hotel from there. I was keyed up with nervous excitement all day, then rushed home to shower, change my clothes, and finish packing for our overnight stay. I expected her to arrive several minutes early, and hoped I'd be showered and dressed before she did, but my anxiety increased with each passing minute as I feared that she'd call to cancel and I'd be flying solo.
Thankfully she didn't, and I didn't. She arrived 15 minutes later than planned, but we still had more than enough time to drive to the hotel and get a Lyft to the arena. But first, a practical consideration. A few miles from home, en route to the hotel, I casually asked my mom if she had the tickets. "Yeah," she answered, a bit too hesitantly for my liking. "I have mine," she continued. And mine?! I swerved to the side of the road and parked the car, opening the trunk to grab her purse, hearts palpitating while she slowly pulled out her ticket, which was securely attached to mine.
We returned to the road, panic slowly abating, and arrived at the hotel about 45 minutes later, checking in, settling our luggage in our room, and eating quickly in the dining room before we made final preparations and waited for our Lyft in the lobby with an elderly couple headed in the same direction.
We arrived in a misty rain shortly after the KeyBank Center's doors opened at 7 PM, and waded through a mob into airport-like security, received wristbands for floor-seat access, and were shepherded by helpful ushers to our tenth-row seats. To my relief, the seats were great, with a clear seated view of the stage and a projection screen to our left, which my mom used when prolonged standing became challenging. The evening's entertainment kicked off with an exuberant reformed version of Chic with Nile Rodgers at the helm, playing dance favorites like "We Are Family," "Let's Dance," "Get Lucky," "Upside Down," "Good Times," and "Le Freak" for nearly an hour, a long set for an opening act, before the stage was vacated and reset for Cher.
By that time, the arena had filled, with only a few visible vacant seats behind us, as we collectively endured the long 45-minute wait between acts. After a false alarm or two, the projection screens broadcast a Cher career - music, movies, and television - retrospective that heightened intensity until the timeless legend finally descended to the stage, in true Cher fashion, in a giant oval birdcage and performed "Strong Enough" and "Woman's World" before launching into a lengthy account of her 40th birthday proceedings, first appearance on David Letterman, and being initially rejected for The Witches of Eastwick because she reportedly wasn't young and "sexy enough."
Well-timed video clip montages, dance performances, and guitar solos allowed her costume-change breaks in between songs (with replica costumes) from every era of her career, including an "I Got You Babe" duet with Sonny (who appeared onscreen), "And the Beat Goes On," "Welcome to Burlesque" (a definite highlight), "The Shoop Shoop Song," "After All," "I Found Someone," "If I Could Turn Back Time" (in black leather jacket and butt-baring black sequined leotard, which she rocked), "Fernando," "Waterloo," "All or Nothing," and ending too soon with "Believe."
I enjoyed the show, of course, and honestly didn't care (for once) if she was singing live or lip-synching (she sounded fantastic either way) because the performance was so incredibly entertaining. I was worried about my mom from beginning to end, though, wondering if she was feeling all right, if she needed to use the bathroom, and if she would be able to climb the stairs to exit the arena. (Maybe the same way she worried about me the last time we were there, more than 20 years earlier, for Tom Collins' Tour of World and Olympic Figure Skating Champions.) It was a different experience, for sure: more rewarding because I shared it with her, but more stressful because, having removed her far from her comfort zone, I felt responsible for getting her back home safely and taking care of her along the way.
After the concert, we slowly shuffled up the stairs, moving among the throng, to wait on our Lyft. Getting to the arena was easy; getting picked up from the arena when surrounding streets were blocked by police was an adventure. It took 30 minutes on the phone with my driver (and several failed street-access attempts on his part) as we walked several unfamiliar blocks from the arena while I worried about our safety and my mom's walking ability. Finally, at midnight, utterly frozen and beyond exhausted, our Lyft driver reached us and safely delivered us back to our room where we thawed out and unwound.
I apologized profusely for the detour and half-jokingly told her I wouldn't blame her if she never went out with me again. She took it in stride, but acknowledged that, though she was homesick, she would never have passed up the opportunity to see Cher. Who would?
