Singing in the tunnel

What do we do when we're afraid?

It starts with a message from my friend Jenna, who lives an hour away. I’m cooking eggs and getting breakfast out, so I’ll read it soon.

“When does the Eras Tour end?” Annalee, my youngest, asks as I set cereal on the table.

“Um, let me check.” I type her question into my phone. But an answer isn’t the first result. Instead I read the words, “Cheapest tickets worldwide for Eras Tour Hamburg!” I click on the date, a week from now, and gasp at the price. It really is amazing.

That would be so fun! I think. A week ago, I took my kids to the Zurich concert. I didn’t mind sitting it out because I knew they were having such an amazing time, and I didn’t know if I was enough of a true “Swiftie” to justify buying myself a ticket. But this is such a good price! If only…

Oh yeah, back to Jenna’s message. “Did you see the text from Ashlee?”

No… what?

I check my messaging apps and find it. “Do you wanna come see Taylor Swift with me, Ruth, and Jenna in Hamburg?”

YES!!! Oh my gosh yes, yes I do!!!

But then again—reality. Jayna and Skyler, my two full-fledged adult daughters happen to be home right now, but both are extremely busy with online work and studies. Same with Lilly, my high schoooler. I talk fast, explaining, and message Matt. Can I? Please?? The answer is unanimous: “Absolutely. You should.” What?! No resistance—at all?

Twenty years ago, when Jayna was five and Skyler was eighteen months old and we lived in Rota, Spain, two of my friends invited me to go to Venice with them. Matt was deployed, so at first it seemed like a fun diversion. But then I pictured my friends, who didn’t yet have children of their own, and the pace they would want to keep. And then there would be me, dispensing a never-ending supply of snacks to my red-cheeked little ones, trying to keep everyone hydrated while also making it to bathrooms in time. I was exhausted just imagining it. No, I told my friends ruefully, they’d have a lot more fun without me.

And that was the last time I was invited on a girls’ trip. There were more babies and school calendars and way too many uncertain deployment schedules and international moves.

Until now. I’m thrilled.

By afternoon, Jenna, another friend Jamie, and I have bought concert tickets and come up with a plan for getting to Hamburg, six hours away. There we will meet up with Ashlee and Ruth, who are traveling all the way from California because the ticket prices are that good.

Jenna, Jamie, and I discuss what we’re going to wear. I buy a sequined lavender top to pair with my black jeans, and Skyler loans me all the glittery makeup and body spray she bought for last week’s concert, along with an express tutorial on how to apply all of it.

The night before I’m supposed to leave, I start questioning everything. I’ve only met Ashlee and Ruth via Zoom. Now we’re sharing a hotel room. I like my bed, my nighttime routines. What if they’re actually super rude? What if I get sick or have a migraine? What if the tickets turn out to be a scam? What if the car breaks down or I get in an accident?

“Mom.” Jayna, who just turned twenty-five two days ago, interrupts my panic. “You have to. Even if all that happens, even if they turn out to be the worst women in the world—which I doubt—you need to do this. Not just for you but for us to see you having a life of your own again. You could say it’s been a long time coming.”

Tears threaten, but I laugh at what she’s done there. “Okay… fine,” I say with an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “I guess I’ll go to the concert!”

The next morning, I’m out the door early to pick up Jenna and Jamie. The six-hour drive seems like nothing as we talk and laugh, and before I know it, we’re pulling into into a subterranean garage in Hamburg. The other women are at a cafe around the corner, and we greet each other with hugs, not at all like this is our first time actually meeting but more like friends who haven’t seen each other in ages.

We spend the rest of the afternoon getting ready. I try unsuccessfully to remember the makeup tutorial and end up Facetiming Skyler, who laughs as she walks me through the steps again. Jenna, Jamie, and I lean toward the bathroom mirror together, daubing and swiping and spraying, cracking up, feeling like teens again.

“Oh look!” I point to the beam of light by the door, shimmering with tiny sparkles. “We’ve made it magical!”

A thunderstorm sweeps through the city just as we’re about to head out, but Jenna is prepared: she whips out clear ponchos to pull over our sequins. Even now, as we drip glitter with every step, our mom flags fly, running through checklists and stopping to use the bathroom one last time.

We’re taking the train to a station about a mile from the stadium where the concert is to be held. Hundreds of people wait on the platform, squeezing into every spare inch of space, and somehow there are even more once the train actually arrives. Now I recall a thought that had darted through my mind whenever I imagined going to this concert: I don’t like crowds. They terrify me. It started during my childhood in Bangladesh, riding buses and trains that were so crowded, many passengers rode on the roof or hung out of the doorways. I remember clearly being crammed between Mom and my sister Jenny, and the hot, stifling air.

Then, just after moving to California following our three years in Spain, Matt and I took Jayna and Skyler to Disneyland over Veteran’s Day. Matt went with Skyler, aged two, back to the hotel for a nap, but Jayna wanted to watch a parade in California Disney. The crowds pushed against us, and Jayna stumbled. The weight of so many people squeezing against us felt like water pressure on a submarine. I lifted her whole six-year-old body onto my hip and held her there for over an hour, even as my back and arms screamed for relief. People kept pushing against us, but I held her tight against me until the parade ended and the crowds dispersed.

Now, on this train in Hamburg, I inch toward a small window cracked open to let in fresh air. I’m almost there when I hear a voice ask, “Where are you from?” A woman seated near my hip wears a sparkly purple turban. Her hands rest on a cane in front of her, and her face is gaunt with eyebrows painted onto pale skin, but her eyes and smile are radiant.

“Me?” I point to my chest. “Oh, um. America. But I live here in Germany.”

She smiles and tilts her chin toward Jenna. “And you?”

The people around her all answer in turn—Germany, America, Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands. Before I know it, everyone disembarks and begins walking toward the stadium, including the turbaned woman, who is still smiling. I breathe the fresh, damp air, and excitement takes over again.

The concert is, of course, amazing. Afterward, we linger in our seats, discussing our favorite parts, as we watch the takedown and clean-up. I hope the crowds have thinned by the time we leave, but this is a 65,000 seat stadium, and it was full. There are still so many people, and everyone is trying to get on the train. Outside the station again, we can barely move. Somehow, though, I feel this mass of people inching closer to the neck of a narrow pedestrian tunnel that dips under the track. We can’t do this.

I lived an hour from Seoul in 2022 when the nightmarish Itaewon Tragedy ended the lives of 159 people a couple days before Halloween. It was a crowd surge on streets I knew well, having lived just blocks from Itaewon the year before. As I read the terrifying news reports the following morning, I vividly pictured every minute of the terror and could only calm myself by thinking about how I would avoid massive crowds like that.

But here I am.

I keep a smile plastered on my face, not wanting my friends to know that I can hardly breathe. How far is it to the Airbnb? Can I just walk there instead? But then again, how could I even escape the crowd at this point? I feel sick. What if I throw up? Will that cause pandemonium and…?

I focus on the policeman watching over the crowds and force myself to take deep breaths, trying to keep my eyes focused as far ahead as possible. Am I the only one afraid right now? The only one aware of what could happen? Long breath in, longer breath out…

My pounding pulse slows, and I hear Taylor’s songs playing over the loudspeakers. Everyone in the crowd sings along. The voices of all these strangers swirl around me, and suddenly they seem less like danger and more like friends. I join in as we squeeze into the tunnel, impossibly even closer to each other. At first my voice is shaking, but as I take it all in, I sing louder.

About halfway through, it occurs to me that we can’t hear the music any more, but no one has stopped singing. We’re all just taking one step at a time, our voices—the song—filling the tunnel.

And then, somehow, we’re on the other side. We all head to different platforms and destinations. The driver of our train cracks jokes over the intercom as we ride through the night. At long last, we make it back to our hotel. Still full of adrenaline, my friends and I don’t sleep much, but somehow that energy carries us all the way home the next day.

“How was it?” my kids ask as I let myself in the front door of our home. All five press in, but I don’t mind this crowd. I plop onto the couch and tell them all about the sparkles under the lights as we got ready, the woman in the turban with her brilliant smile and, of course, the concert. But my favorite part is when I tell them how we all sang together in the tunnel and kept singing each other along to safety on the other side, even when we couldn’t hear the music.

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