When I was a child, I discovered my baby book – a scrapbook that was sent home with my mother from the hospital, titled The Book of Baby Mine. Being a word nerd from a young age, I was struck by that grammar – “baby mine” – it felt incorrect to me. It should be “my baby” or “the baby of mine,” I thought. (I hadn’t encountered the song by the same name from Dumbo yet, which might be where that title came from.)
Now, years later, being a parent whose first baby recently moved out of the nest – “baby mine” makes a whole lot more sense that has nothing to do with grammar.
You were so sweet you were so bright You were so deer in my headlights I helped you out, gathered you in Held you gently against my skin
Baby mine I love you all the time Baby mine you’re always in my mind
You are my joy born from pain You’re the deep happiness I named You are the laughter kissing my tears My life restarted when you got here
Baby mine I love you all the time Baby mine you’re always in my mind
Sleep well darling wherever you are And know I’m close, though it feels far I’ll sing for you all night long These are the words, this is the song:
Baby mine I love you all the time Baby mine you’re always in my mind
At last, my #songaweek2022 group used a photo for a prompt instead of a word or phrase. This felt like a game-changer to me in terms of connecting with a prompt for inspiration. I think the photo was of the Great Wall of China, but I thought of a road, then of the song from The Hobbit that starts, “the road goes ever on and on. . . ” and I went from there.
I felt like deliberately slowing down in the writing and playing of this song, and so I did.
If you listen closely and/or with headphones you might be able to hear the crickets singing along outside the open window.
The road goes ever on And over it a song That if you hear will draw you near to where you never know where you might go
The day lies before you And with it much to do But there’s a song that draws you on To where you always know you’re going home
The ground carries your load The clouds catch evening’s glow They’re changing you, and changed by you Till everything will never be the same
Life continues to be a bit crazy around here as we moved our oldest to college last week and two of us go back to school here at home (middle school lunch lady and high school sophomore). I mean not here at *home* but in our hometown. I mean not actually our town but the next one over, which is only a few blocks away. But I digress.
All that to say I’m still not back to finishing a song every week. This one was started last week and wrapped up and roughly recorded this week. Not one of my favorites but it’s just good to write again!
Here on the water in the middle of the land You can hear the wind, it’s whispering through the wings of birds above you And here in the forest surrounded by the trees You can feel the pulse of all the being things around you Ooooh. . . . and that’s called home
Deep in the hollows of your heavy heart There is still a song reverberating in this moment Lapsing synapses at the back of your brain Keep trying all the ways they know to tell the story how it goes Ooooh . . . . and that’s called life
And you You will be well You will find wisdom in the way of wonder
Through my childhood and teenage years, my family moved around a lot. While our home address changed often, our favorite vacation place was the ocean, and we went there many times, up and down the Atlantic seaboard. One year when my brother and I were teenagers, my dad wrote a poem inspired by watching us run ahead of him, away from him, along the beach, where our smaller selves used to cling to his hand and struggle to keep up.
Now I’m the parent, and this is the last summer before my oldest moves out of my house and into a college dorm room (two weeks from today!). It’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, and in one of the more angsty moments recently, she said to me, “my life is falling apart!” Which is a hard truth about growing up – the life you know is shrinking, fading, becoming the life you knew – to make way for the bigger life you are stepping into.
This is a song for Luthien, with footage from a video Nathan took of our kids enjoying the Ocean City, New Jersey surf on our vacation this summer. To quote the boardwalk souvenir shop we browsed later that day, “happiness comes in waves!”
You got a lot of something, I hope you take it with you But bring it on back here sometimes, I’m gonna miss you child Life as you know it’s falling apart without a doubt but What you don’t know is out there for you to go and find
You were born for this You were made for these times You’re the hopeful face Of the human kind
You gotta look ahead now, don’t worry I’m behind you Loving you like I always have and always will Life is the thing you make it so make the thing you want to Take the scenic route, blaze a happy trail
You were born for this You were made for these times You’re the hopeful face Of the human kind
You were born for this You were made for these times You’re the hopeful face Of the human kind
Here’s a song exploring the balance of individual freedom with community responsibility. The first lines came to me soon after I heard the news that Roe v. Wade had been overturned. They might just as easily have come from the mouth of an anti-masker a couple years ago. The next lines are a reminder that I have changed my opinion multiple times in my life and I’m likely to do it again – so I’m learning to hold less militantly to any position, and trying to pay closer attention and care to the people around me.
The prompt for this week 31 of #songaweek2022 was “armed and dangerous,” which brought to my mind the awful number of gun fatalities we’ve had right here in my city just this summer, not to mention the wider world.
The first lines of the little bridge at the end (“the rains come down and the floods go up”) came from a song I learned in Sunday School many years ago – about the wise man who built his house on a rock and the foolish one who built his house on the sand (thus the “sands of time” line for my further allusionary pleasure). I’m thinking here about actual flooding and wildfires, resulting from our foolish refusal to build sustainable systems that acknowledge our limits and our need to care for ourselves and our planet.
More than ever, I’m convinced that the way forward is the way of love – not blind sentiment but thoughtful, engaging, respectful and compassionate care for whoever I find myself facing, physically or virtually or however else, at the present moment.
Here’s something I read this week that I immediately cut and pasted in my notes, said by Valarie Kaur – “Listening does not grant the other side legitimacy. It grants them humanity—and preserves our own.”
I would probably do what they want me to But since they took away my right to choose I feel uneasy
So many things I used to rail against Now they kind of make some sense I take it easy
Think for yourself but please don’t stop there Think about everybody else
I’ve been trying hard to hear the truth But with all these voices shouting the news It isn’t easy
And the heat sets in and the tempers rise And the guns come out and somebody dies It’s far too easy
Think for yourself but please don’t stop there Think about everybody else
And the rains come down and the floods go up As we race against the sands of time And the fires burn and the tanks roll in And the wide world weeps and the hearts of humans break
Think for yourself but please don’t stop there Think about everybody else
Julia Bloom 