I see my feet walking on a gravel road. I’m on my way to watch some independent short
films, because I’ve discovered that I like them. So I’m going to go. Just like that. I’m not going to ask anybody’s
permission. I tell my kids I’m going,
and then I’m off to see maybe some really great films, maybe some really lame
ones. I’m a grown woman and it’s the
first time in my whole life that I
can do what I want, when I want. It is
intoxicating. I am so happy. That was Cornerstone.
Walking around I see some people in a wooded camping
spot. They are having cappuccinos and invite me to join
them. We talk and enjoy each other’s
company for a while. Then I go on with
my journey, with some new friends in my quiver.
I’m in a steaming hot tent, watching some kids play really
loud music and watching some more kids throwing themselves at each other. One of the kids on the stage happens to be a
boy who helped me set up my booth in the exhibition tent. Humbly and helpfully, he found out what I
needed to know, and then the next time I see him he’s singing and screaming in
front of a bunch of singing and screaming kids.
It was beautiful.
I have a million pictures in my mind that bring me to that
place with that feeling that is uniquely and incomparably Cornerstone. Driving my grandgirls around in a golf cart,
watching the circle pit at a Flatfoot show, listening to Lost Dogs, eating
chips and salsa, sipping iced Thai coffee with good friends, my children hot
and sticky and dirty and happy and having the time of their lives and not
wanting to leave. Where are the
instructions for saying goodbye to that?
I met and fell in love with my husband there – we married
each other before God on the spot where we met.
I brought kids there that got to have their own memories of Cornerstone. I am forever changed because of a music
festival in Bushnell , Illinois
The first, the best memory is this: it is our very first
Cornerstone experience. I reluctantly
agreed to go with a friend, and then she couldn’t go. So here I was, with two girls that I barely
knew, camping next to a bunch of very smelly hippies (turns out it was Madison
Greene). I was hot and cranky,
regretting my acceptance of this particular responsibility, with my boys – my middle
child who wasn’t quite a teenager, and my oldest, suffering son, an outcast
from every group he’d ever tried to be a part of. They took off for a walkabout of the
grounds. When they came back, my oldest,
my Jason, said, “Mom, I belong here.”
How do you say goodbye to that?
