Sundays are usually tiny vacation days for me, in which I don’t check email or go on social media. So I didn’t hear the news about the Orlando shooting until I was checking email at breakfast this morning. Tears with my coffee.
The song I wrote for Week 23 of #songaweek2016 was submitted on Saturday, but I offer it here as a little lullaby in the face of the tragic news we are all processing.
Pierce Pettis sang, “everything matters if anything matters at all,” on his album Everything Matters. That line has always stuck with me, and it influenced my song for Week 21 of #songaweek2016. With bass and percussion by Nathan Bloom, making it an official Cabin of Love song!
Time to wash the clothes
time to scrub the sink
time to give the little seedlings
a nice long drink
time to feed the chickens
time to walk the dog
time to listen to the children
time to write for the blog
Every day of our lives doesn’t break new ground
every hour in a day won’t blow your mind
every minute of ours doesn’t make a mark
but every moment matters
Time to go to work
time to eat a snack
time to wash the dirty dishes
time to put them back
time to read a book
time to run a few miles
time to play a little music
time to rest a little while
Three hands sweeping round a face
grabbing hold of everything we’ve done
Where do they carry it?
How should we know?
It’s a mystery where we’re going
but how we love to run.
I wasn’t planning on having children. Actually, I was planning on not having children. Until my now-firstborn, now-twelve-year-old, first made herself known. That extra pink line on the plastic strip might as well have been an angel, and I would have benefited from the routine angelic greeting, “do not be afraid.” I admit I cried myself to sleep that night, but it seems I always take a night to freak out before changing my plans in any major way. Sometimes even the sweetest surprises are first met with salty tears.
And now, we are two-thirds of the way to that tiny baby’s high school graduation.
Week 15 of #songaweek2016 included an extra challenge, to write a song in the form of a recipe. I already felt like writing a song about my daughter, so I found a way to squeeze it into recipe form too.
Take a smidgen of him and a dash of me
Bake for nine months at ninety-eight point six degrees
Then when my body feels like it’s about to break
It’s time to open up and meet my babycake
Pretty baby pretty baby with her daddy’s eyes
Pretty baby pretty baby mama’s sweetest surprise
Give liberal breastfuls of milk to my sugar and spice
Try not to scream the first time she bites
Blend up some squash and put it on a teaspoon
Pretend it’s on a mission and she’s the moon
Pretty baby pretty baby with her daddy’s eyes
Pretty baby pretty baby mama’s sweetest surprise
In a medium class combine her with twenty kids
Sift through all her papers and art projects
Roll out chores and charts so she gets her work done
But ditch the cookie cutters, let her make her own fun
Pretty baby pretty baby with her daddy’s eyes
Pretty baby pretty baby mama’s sweetest surprise
Sometimes my little sweet gets a little saucy
Sometimes she flames up like bananas foster
Then I let her settle
Let her sweetness age, let her take her time
Gotta wait patiently for the finest wine
Then however she decides to pour herself out
She’ll outsparkle all I’ve dreamed about
Pretty baby pretty baby with her daddy’s eyes
Pretty baby pretty baby mama’s sweetest surprise
We sprang forward last week. Because that’s what we do. I wrote this song on a gorgeous spring day, and recorded it on a snowy cold one. Ah, March.
Anyhoo, here it is, my song for week 11 of #songaweek2016.
the light and the birds are coming back
kids and the dog rolling in the grass
guess we’re happy here for another year
eggs in the coop laundry on the line
a fine-looking man who’s mine all mine
I’m a satisfied one for another month
tuck an hour away
get it back someday
pizzas in the oven, beer in the fridge
we’ll take a Friday night flight in the TARDIS
sweet sigh of relief for another week
the outside’s breezing through the house
blue sky getting scrubbed with fluffy clouds
think we’ll be okay for another day
tuck an hour away
get it back someday
marching, marching,
time keeps marching on
Once again, Nathan joined in on recording my song for Song a Week 2016, and it was fun! We got our daughter Lu involved in the video-making too. Here’s week 4’s song:
Oh, and as the song suggests, we added a dog to our family. Not something I thought would ever happen (again, after a trial week with a difficult dog a couple years ago), but that’s another story I hope to write about sometime in the near future.
A three-year-old girl under a green bedspread
Dreaming black dogs barking all around her head
At the kitchen table a grown man laughs
Barking like a dog in a monster mask
Hey that was so funny I’m terrified
Now pack it up honey let’s take a ride
on Black Dog Road
Black Dog Road
I keep coming back to Black Dog Road
Standing with her family when she’s ten years old
She meets a black dog sheltered in a Valley of Gold
On the ride back home she whispers I love you
The nightmares gone, now her dreams have come true
A thirty-something woman drives alone at night
Has to pull the car over it’s not running right
And the exit name, wouldn’t you know
All glowing on a green sign, Black Dog Road
Now she’s a ten-year-old’s mother and her kid wants a dog
She won’t settle for a cat or a fish or a frog
They talk and talk and talk for a number of years
Then out of the blue a black dog appears
And the mom and dad and the kids agree
He belongs at home in their family
Julia Bloom 