After all these years

  SNL celebration was on, as soon as I remembered.  I watched only some of it, though now that it's over I wished I'd watched more of it.  I find some of the skits tiresome, and as unfunny now as then.  I listened to most of the show from the kitchen, walking in to look at Paul McCartney and a few others.  But I was most strongly drawn to Paul Simon, "Still Crazy After All These Years."  He looked a little pinched and wan, and his voice is not what it was; age does exact its due.  But there he was, such a nostalgic trip into the past-----no fireworks, no writhing back-up dancers, no explosions of any kind---just one man, one microphone,  captivating an audience with his voice only, though, sure, he did play an invisible keyboard from time to time, flexing his fingers as he sang.  My mind turns to the past and finds this memory:
       Dave and I are in Rochester, attending his company's annual Christmas party.  It's the early 1970's.  We have just 2 kids, and they are at my mother's house, for one night or two, I can't remember.  They are young enough still so that they never leave my mind, though I try not to talk about it.  We are bound to have fun.  It is a party.  There is lots of alcohol involved.  That was the culture and this group of "job shoppers" is well into it.  We stay at a motel, but go to the boss's house for drinks before the party, I think, and I know for certain that we all went there again the morning after, for a mimosa breakfast.  I remember us riding in the back seat of their car on the way to wherever the party was being held, and the boss's wife was singing "Slip Sliding Away" as we actually did slide on the slippery, snow covered road.  She seemed calm, and happy; she was a very pretty, sophisticated woman, married to a wealthy man.  They had 4 children, mostly grown up, maybe one still in high school.  She classified them as 2 being conservative and 2 being liberal, and not in the political sense, but as to their lifestyle.  One son was in the Marines, as I recall, and one daughter was an equestrian, with riding and horses her chosen interest.  Some years later, one daughter married a doctor, and within a few years, was found dead, alone in a car,  in a hospital parking lot, evidently abandoned by whoever drove her there when she overdosed.    But all that was several years later.  At the present, the wife is  singing a Paul Simon tune, seemingly comfortable with her husband's driving along the slick highway, most likely he being somewhat relaxed also by the pre-dinner drinks.  They divorced a short time after that.
        I don't remember much about the party.  There were lots of parties then, and we attended all of them.  Summer parties at the golf club, winter parties where Dave played Santa, parties designed to distribute the profit-sharing feature of employment.  Business was good in those days---the better it was, the more parties there were.  I clearly remember the ride home.  It was a Sunday morning and it was  snowing, lightly at first and then heavily.  The highway was slippery, and we passed several cars which had slid into the ditches.  I so wanted to be home with my kids, and any mother will recognize that feeling you get when you think you may never see them again.  Dave attempted to be reassuring.  He said if we do slide off the road, we'll just get towed out.  The road is open, there's not much traffic, there's nothing to hit.  OK, I tell myself, that's true.  But then on the other side of the road a car is off on the shoulder, on its roof.  How could that happen?  A fluke.  Several miles later, on our side of the road, another vehicle, also on its roof.  I'm pretty sure I'll never see my kids again.  Everything is slip-sliding away.  Thanks, Paul Simon.  But I do love you.