The Night We Didn’t See Taylor Swift

We’re hap­py, free, con­fused, and lone­ly at the same time. ~Taylor Swift, 22

Taylor Swift lit­er­al­ly saved my child’s life. I wish that was a metaphor, but it isn’t. But that par­tic­u­lar trau­ma is not one we’re ready to share yet, so here’s anoth­er story.

Much like the Wizard Birthday is eleven, the year one turns five is Music Christmas in our house. In 2010, we told Izzie she could ask Santa for any instru­ment, and he would bring it to her with lessons. We crossed our fin­gers she wouldn’t choose a piano (for where would we put it?) David prayed for the drums. I made sure it was the guitar.

Speak Now, Taylor Swift’s third stu­dio album, was released that October. For two months, I played that CD non-stop when my daugh­ter was around, remind­ing her that Taylor wrote and sang all of her own songs and she played the gui­tar (hint, hint). When Mean came on, we would scream-sing the lyrics. 

Speak Now was Izzie’s gate­way drug. She asked Santa for a gui­tar, and we start­ed lessons. My five-year-old could bare­ly hold up her half-size Yamaha. We learned a G chord. Then C. Then D. As soon as we mas­tered E minor, we knew enough to learn Teardrops on My Guitar from Taylor’s debut album.

Fast for­ward 13 years, three gui­tars, and many, many Taylor songs lat­er. We are unapolo­getic Swifties, sprin­kling lyrics into nor­mal con­ver­sa­tions, wor­ry­ing about Taylor’s love life, tag­ging each oth­er when her cats show up on the socials, throw­ing par­ties every December 13, going to bat­tle when some­one sug­gests Jake Gyllenhall be for­giv­en or — hold my ear­rings — Taylor is over­rat­ed. She’s tal­ent­ed, seem­ing­ly kind, a savvy busi­ness­woman, and a once-in-a-life­time songwriter.

When Taylor announced last year that she was going on tour, we lost our minds. The Red Tour was Izzie’s first con­cert ever. Reputation was even bet­ter. The Lover Tour was a pan­dem­ic can­cel­la­tion. So this was a home­com­ing of sorts, a full-cir­cle moment. Taylor would be show­cas­ing her favorites from every album on this so-called Eras Tour. 

For Swifties, it does not get bet­ter than this.

On November 15, I got into Ticketmaster’s online queue for tick­ets with the 1.5 mil­lion oth­er lucky fans who received ver­i­fied codes. By 10:17 a.m. the sale famous­ly descend­ed into chaos, the site crash­ing repeat­ed­ly. I spent the bet­ter part of sev­en hours try­ing to get tick­ets, to no avail. Ticketmaster’s so-called “dynam­ic pric­ing” gouged prices so high I couldn’t have afford­ed them had I been able to snag any. I was heartbroken.

And then, months lat­er, the Swiftie Gods smiled. Izzie won the tick­et lot­tery for Taylor’s May 7 show in Nashville at Nissan Stadium. 

For three months, we trained. We learned and prac­ticed every crowd shout-out. We made over 30 friend­ship bracelets with Taylor lyrics to pass out to our seat­mates (my favorite said Scooter is a Bitch). We designed our cos­tumes. Izzie sewed her own shirt, care­ful­ly hand-sewing LED fairy lights in the lin­ing to sparkle (ahem, shim­mer) all night. I mem­o­rized the entire discog­ra­phy of Gracie Abrams and Phoebe Bridgers, the open­ing acts (Izzie was already well-versed). She painstak­ing­ly made three glit­ter posters, one for each act. We stocked our clear bags like we were prep­ping for Y2K: water bot­tle, binoc­u­lars, rain pon­chos, hair bands, safe­ty pins, band-aids, and Sharpies to write Taylor’s lucky num­ber 13 on our hands. God love our hearts, we even made our very first TikTok video when we were get­ting ready (we look amazing). 

To us, this was not just a con­cert. It was a whole thing.

May 7 final­ly came. As we drove toward Nashville, we sang Taylor and waved our signs at pass­ing cars. We made a pact that, what­ev­er hap­pened, we trust­ed that the night was unfurl­ing exact­ly as it was sup­posed to.

And then it unfurled, one dis­as­ter after another.

We arrived around five o’clock, rain sprin­kling enough that we donned our pon­chos. We had to take an ele­va­tor to our seats and got on the wrong one. As we exit­ed the wrong ele­va­tor in search of the right one, a secu­ri­ty guard was scream­ing for every­one to “go to the ramps! We are under an emer­gency shel­ter-in-place order! Now! Now!”

We got tuna-fished under a con­crete ramp with thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple as a storm of epic pro­por­tions engulfed us. The rain came in earnest, rain­ing side­ways, leak­ing from over­head, and flood­ing the sta­di­um. The tem­per­a­ture dropped 20 degrees in two min­utes. The light­ning flashed con­stant­ly, the thun­der so close over­head that the con­crete seemed to shake. 

We had the bad luck of get­ting stuck under the ramps, as opposed to the sec­ond floor (the “club lev­el”), where there was food, alco­hol, and bath­rooms. Those lucky fans were in the same storm, but they were not in the same boat. 

Us low­ly ram­pers? We saw one have a mas­sive pan­ic attack. Two oth­er times we were pushed aside by EMTs on their way to fans who had passed out. Security would let no one move any­where. We were cat­tle, but felt cer­tain no storm this intense would last long. But every time there was a flash of light­ning, the clock for the show start reset anoth­er 30 minutes.

For three hours, we ral­lied. Izzie and start­ed sing-alongs. We passed out bracelets. We asked peo­ple where they were from, what was their favorite song, how they felt about the breakup. 

In the fourth hour, our enthu­si­asm waned. We were still hud­dled, cold, drenched, hun­gry, and increas­ing­ly in need of a bath­room. Evidently, Nissan Stadium tweet­ed that they did expect Taylor to play at some point, but no one knew this because no one on the ramps had cell ser­vice. We just assumed the sta­di­um didn’t want any­one leav­ing in the storm because of lia­bil­i­ty. (And to be clear, I feel cer­tain it wasn’t Taylor’s call. I can’t imag­ine her man­age­ment showed her pho­tos from the ramp. They only shared the videos of the dry and well-fed fans on the club level). 

At 9:02, light­ning flashed again. Everyone around us was cer­tain the show would be resched­uled, like the fat­ed 2021 Garth Brooks show.

With tears in her eyes, Izzie admit­ted she was exhaust­ed, cold, and hun­gry, ner­vous sys­tem warn­ing signs for any­one, but espe­cial­ly some­one with OCD. She real­ized that she didn’t have it in her to sit in the rain for anoth­er three to four hours. Even for her icon.

So we left at 9:07 (10:07 accord­ing to our Kentucky body clocks), know­ing there was no re-entry. Dejected, we walked back to the car in the pour­ing rain. Had we stayed, it would have been three a.m. our time before the show end­ed. We promised to design even bet­ter cos­tumes for the make-up show. When we got to the car, with cell ser­vice restored, we found out the show was expect­ed to happen.

On Monday, we drove back to Kentucky, then moped and napped, recharg­ing our ner­vous sys­tems. We ignored most texts ask­ing us about the show and refused to get on social media to learn what amaz­ing sur­prise song we had missed. We sighed dra­mat­i­cal­ly and won­dered aloud when we could play Cornelia Street with­out crying.

But I also real­ized some­thing incred­i­ble. My daugh­ter, who has had far more dis­ap­point­ment in her young life than most (neu­ro­di­ver­gent brain, lots of wrong meds, blah blah) is one tough, resilient cook­ie. She chose her men­tal health over Taylor Swift. She knew her lim­its and was will­ing to hon­or them, even though it meant the worst FOMO she ever felt. 

That’s badass.

Knowing that I’m send­ing her off to study music this fall — in Nashville, iron­i­cal­ly — all this left me feel­ing proud of her lev­el of self-aware­ness. And is a pow­er­ful word. Just because you’re dis­ap­point­ed doesn’t mean you’re also not right. You can feel sad and mad and relieved and hun­gry and con­fused and deter­mined and cold and excit­ed and proud simultaneously.

So maybe we nev­er get a do-over. I’ll still trea­sure the last three months of pre-Taylor antic­i­pa­tion I had with my baby girl.

But if, by some mir­a­cle, Taylor reads this? We’re only 75 min­utes from Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati. And we’re free.