Last night, I did something I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d do: I shared the stage with world-class musicians at the Linda.

I am not a world-class musician. I am a humble late-comer to the music of Django Reinhardt and its community of practitioners and fanatics spanning the globe. But at the age of 55 I find myself playing in a gypsy-jazz band, and we found ourselves invited to take part in a benefit for WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio with a slate of fabulous swing acts: Zack Cohen, the Hot Club of Saratoga, the global superstar Stephane Wrembel.

My band, Hot Tuesday, played a brief opening set and then joined the gods onstage for a closing jam. I couldn’t believe it. This is not something I ever anticipated. But then again, nothing about my life in the last seven years is anything I ever anticipated, as I am well past the point of anticipating anything.

After my husband’s death, I stopped trying to predict a single damn thing about life. I take nothing for granted. Each and every triumph, no matter how small, is a cause for celebration.

Example 1: The Linda.

Example 2: The toilet seat in my upstairs bathroom.

I installed a new one last weekend, letting out a whoop of victory upon completion. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!, I yelled, pumping my fist in the air. Then I threw back my head and laughed. Then I did backflips across the bathroom floor. Then I flexed my biceps so hard that my shirt ripped.

This is where I reside: at a place of EXTREMELY small ambitions. At least when it comes to things like:

A) My house, in particular my plumbing, in particular anything involving sewage;
B) My car, in particular anything involving expensive repairs;
C) My quest for world domination; and
D) My knees.

In all regards, I count my blessings and take what comes. If I harbor any ambitions at this point, it’s to get through the day without catastrophe. To be as happy as I can be, fumbling along with gratitude. To love. To not hurt. To savor the present.

It’s a funny thing about life. We start it without harboring any ambitions whatsoever, just content to cry and pee and poop and gurgle and and suck and then cry and pee and poop some more and spit up projectile milky vomitus onto our parents’ shoulders (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!).

As we mature, our goals evolve. We stop puking on adults and instead start sitting in their classrooms and conforming to their rules. We begin to form and pursue dreams. As the disappointments rack up, we revisit and reconsider those dreams. Maybe we won’t actually scale Everest by 30, cure cancer by 35 and retire a billionaire at 40. Maybe we’ll just go for a few day hikes in the Catskills and find our bliss selling crafts on Etsy. Who knows?

To me, this is life — the Who knows? Forget about the stuff we envision in our youth; it’s the stuff that we don’t envision, the sudden twists, gradual turns and bombshell revelations that boot us into a chapter of living we never saw coming and couldn’t have. I couldn’t have foreseen Chris’s suicide in 2011. I couldn’t have known I’d be facing these years without him, fixing the crap that breaks at home and filling the void with music.

If you’d told 30-year-old me that I’d be playing in a gypsy-jazz band in my fifties, I’d have replied WHAT THE HELL IS GYPSY JAZZ and then said you were totally bonkers. If you’d told 45-year-old me the same thing, I’d have understood the musical term but said you were totally bonkers. If you’d told 50-year-old me, at which point I’d taken maybe a year of jazz lessons, I’d have muttered Ohhhhkayyyyyyyyy righhhhhht and then said you were totally bonkers.

But here I am. There I was last night, squinting into the lights, scratching away with my band mates and wrapped up in the crazy ecstasy of swing. How did I get there? How did this happen? Who knows?

Totally bonkers.