The rule is simple, and clear. I am allowed to sing, in the car. That’s it. Step outside of the vehicle and my lips better seal. Sweets negotiated that deal to protect herself from the embarrassment of public parental crooning. She knew just what she was doing, too. I’ll sing about anything at the drop of a hat.
Related minor rules include the following: Dad does not dance in public, nor skip. She treads lightly there. She’s seen my personal version of a Monty Python “Silly Walk”. I think she knows she’s better off. At home, I’ll dance to some of the songs on Glee, too (I worked on these simple steps for a while). As long as I stand behind her, I’m okay. Now you know the reason why we don’t watch “Dancing with the Stars” or “So You Think You Can Dance” in my house. It’s not that I think I can dance, it’s that I keep trying.
Every once in a while, an allowance is made. Tonight was one of those nights. I was permitted to indulge in various renditions of Carly Rae Jepsen’s number one hit “Call Me Maybe” for close to an hour. Yes! It wasn’t an early Father’s Day gift, no. I just couldn’t get the lyrics right. We must have listened to various versions of the song, twenty different times on YouTube. The Harvard Baseball Team lip-synced cover. The dubbed Obama spoof. Assorted lyrics-on-the-screen videos. I even tried using the Suzuki method! It didn’t matter. I’d play a section, pause, and botch the lyric. Sweets thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. I haven’t seen her laugh that hard since she last watched the Mirror Scene in Duck Soup.
The first part of the song I got right, is the bridge where Jepsen sings:
Before you came into my life
I missed you so bad
I missed you so bad
I missed you so so bad!
I think the truth those words express about love, is perfect. As I sang the bridge, I was tickling Sweets. The words brought tears to my eyes. They capture my experience of having kids. When you’re welcoming a birth, and you feel a child’s first kick, it’s hard to deny that his/her presence in your life is filling a space you didn’t know existed. I think that’s what it’s like when a heart discovers true love.
Jepsen captures perfectly the sense true love gives that “I always needed you.” It’s not because I was lacking and the child, or lover completed me, no, not that. For me, the words aren’t those of adolescent pining. They belong to an adult heart, proclaiming the life-giving essence of true love. It’s the fundamental realization that the presence of this person in your life is helping you become more than you were, and more of who you already are.
Before your true loves come into your life, you have no idea life can be richer, or more real than it is. After they do, you can’t imagine living without them in it. If you have to? There’s sadness, and thanksgiving. They may be gone, but the richness they helped you discover, remains.
The next time you hear this song, why don’t you call them to mind, and join me in proclaiming this truth:
Before you came into my life
I missed you so bad
I missed you so bad
I missed you so so bad!
plaintextnotes 