Garth Brooks; Doing It Right

ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE, someone comes along and does something so totally cool, so entirely self sacrificial in service to others, that your only option is admiration. Goethe said "confronted with great merit, the only resistance is love."Ffor those of us who love the sensitive, melodic music of Garth Brooks, its time to abandon all resistance, and so just feel the love. Time to resist the temptation to lament the loss of all the great albums and concerts that Garth could have recorded during the past ten years, when he was instead staying home, raising his family, missing out on millions of American dollars. Garth says staying home with the kids was the best choice he ever made, that doing so purged him of any guilt he might have otherwise felt, but that doing so was among the hardest decisions of his life. But now, he says, he is ready to come back to his art, strong, ready, as he says, to eat mashed potatoes with both hands. (We may assume that he has silverware at hand). A tough decision indeed, trading the glittery limelight for the not so glittery world of diapers and nightlights. It almost seems as if Garth could have had his cake and eaten it too: say, a large recreational vehicle, homeschooling, wife and kids on the road with him. But no, that would have meant a compromise in quality, a forfeiting of the backyard and the precious lifelong friendships kids form in public schools. Above all else, Garth wanted quality of life for his entire family, and he got it. For that , he is a hero. And who knows? Maybe, every now and then, at the breakfast table, or during bedtime story hour, a tune or two came to mind, and a few melodic passages. And just maybe the rest of us will soon savor the new fruit born of ten years of family time, as Garth gears up to hit the recording studio and the open road once again.