Moments in time. Special moments. Moments when you know you've walked through some door, closed some gate behind you, burned some bridge. Moments upon which Life turns. There are so many of them. So very many.

Some moments are unrecognizable until they are gone and I look at them in my rear view mirror. Others might as well be a flashing neon sign. * MOMENT * MOMENT * MOMENT * And some, more than others, stand out in my memory like blue eyes translucent in the moonlight.

I remember his eyes more than anything else. They haunted me from the very beginning. And I came so close to missing the experience. What slender threads sometimes bind such moments. I hadn't wanted to go out that night at all, and had even copped a bit of a 'tude because Jackie Jones couldn't/wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

Alice and I had acquired Jackie at the Breaker 19 Club the night before. It was the very beginning of our Beer Joint Phase. 6 September 1979, to be exact. We were sitting around our apartment, reliving the building of Shell's Central Power Station, our daytime gig, when we decided there had to be more to life than jawing about work on a Friday night.

"Well, what can we do with our lives?", I asked Alice.

"I don't know," she said. "I was hoping you'd have some ideas."

"What do we like to do? Let's make a list." The secretary in me took over. I had a pen in my hand in about two seconds, and a cigarette pack poised as a notepad.

"Hmmm," Alice mused. "Well, we like music."

"Yeah, yeah we do," I said. MUSIC, I wrote just above "Virginia Slims".

"And we want to meet people," she continued.

MEET PEOPLE, I wrote above MUSIC. (Having started right over "Virginia Slims", I had to work my way up the pack, see. Never do a thing forward if you can do it backward.)

"And we want it to be fun!"

FUN, I wrote, moving up a notch.

"What else?" I held my pen at the ready.

"That's about it, I think. I like to skydive but you say you have an aversion to jumping out of perfectly good airplanes."

"That's affirm." I smiled.

Music/meet people/fun. Looked like beer joints to us. So we decided right there, at that moment in time, sitting on a rented couch in Pasadena, Texas, that we'd "do" the beer joints. We went straight to the car and headed south toward Kemah. First place we saw was the Breaker 19. It was there that we found Jackie.

Alice thought he looked like the quintessential Mountain Man. She was right. He did. Tall, long black hair, black beard, mustache ... one large hairy beast. Looked like he'd just wandered into town for supplies. They met, liked each other, and Jackie wound up sleeping on our couch. (This fact arbitrary and may vary with mileage.)

The next evening was Saturday. Jackie insisted on taking us to Kemah to a place called The Red Barn. Said it featured the best band in the whole world, and we just had to hear 'em. My ears perked up at that "we" he used so cavalierly.

"Whaddayamean 'we', kemosabe? You take Alice anywhere you please. I don't feel like going out."

"Bullshit," came Jackie's reply, "you're going." We argued for hours but his answer never changed. He was adamant. They weren't going without me, and that was that. I finally gave in out of sheer exhaustion. Another moment in time. One of those unrecognizable ones. Jackie was a man on a mission but I was too blind to see.

The Red Barn was all that he promised. Seemed like a hopping place. Cars everywhere. Hard to find a parking place, even at an early hour. Lots of Harleys and Indians parked near the door. Beautiful specimens. Jackie chose a table up front. We ordered drinks. The band took the stage.

In the darkness, the bass player tuned his Fender. The drummer adjusted a cymbal stand and breathed into the mic. "Huuuuuuh", he said. The lights went up and the guitar player turned around. Illuminated before me was a vision. Long blonde hair hanging straight to the middle of his back, falling over his shoulders. Chest bare except for a leather vest. Jeans. Cowboy boots. Tattoo of an Indian Chief in full headdress on his right forearm. Cool. I looked again. There were gaping holes in the face of the Chief where eyes should have been. It was a skull! Far out.

He looked at me. Our eyes met in the dim light. We were both transfixed. I don't think I have ever seen more sorrow in one man's face than I did in his. My heart went out to him. I didn't have the foggiest notion why. I wondered how old he was ... his face was young and yet very old, too. Timeless, in a sense. When I looked at the features individually, I could see great youth. But when his eyes caught mine, centering me in his gaze, the face changed. I could see someone else there. The face revealed an old, old soul, one who had me totally in his grasp.

He smiled. The eyes sparkled. I smiled back. The band went into their first number. I was spellbound. Every fibre of my being pulsed. Suddenly I understood why Jackie wouldn't listen to my protests. His sole purpose existed in bringing me to that moment. In the opening of that door. And I walked through as calmly as if I had always known that I would. Scared out of my wits, thoroughly cognizant that my life would never be the same, and powerless to do anything else.

I didn't know it then, but standing on that stage were my husband, my brother, my roommate, and my nemesis. My joy, my pain, my heaven, my hell. I will never forget that night, or them, for the remainder of this lifetime and all others to follow.

And seventeen years later, long past the speed bumps, detours, potholes, and one-way streets, I glance in the mirror at the place I used to stand and thank the gods for the rough and rocky road.