Birds in the sky, you know how I feel...

(Standard)

(and by Standard, I mean everyone, from Michael Buble to Stevie Wonder have covered it...)

My mom gave me a CD a while back. It was free from Ann Taylor and it's pink, so I'm sure it has something to do with curing breast cancer.

I always skip over the first song, some depressing Dido song. The third song is "You can't take that away from me."

Which I always thought was a horrible song. Why would I want to remember things about someone I was no longer with? It's taken me at least ten years and many listens to finally figure it out. "We may never meet again on this bumpy road of love." We may not. But I will always remember seeing you come to work in your suit on Saturdays, crossing Grant St. as I sat eating my lunch at Bruegger's Bagels. I will always remember the fun we had just flicking a rubber band at each other at my kitchen table. I will always remember that first kiss.

My mother and my father are such different people--my father will occasionally tell me about girls he dated. My mother has told me three such stories in the 38 years I've known her, and they've all been negative. My parents didn't exactly "date," they were friends over the course of nine years, with patches of "going out." My mother "broke up" with my father at least five times. My father remembers washing dishes over Christmas break and thinking that he missed my mom more than he missed the girl he was dating at the time. Now that's an image you can't take away from me.

But from my mother, I learned that dating was horrible, and I had to make sure I married a Christian man. Since my father was often at work, when I was young and impressionable (17), I haven't learned until the past 12 years of my life that my dad enjoyed dating. That he was in a lot of weddings, so had a lot of garter belts on his rear view mirror. My dad? My mom knows how to have fun, she does. But in the realm of dating, my mother is the killjoy and my father is out there, having fun.

The title of this post? Sometimes you have to listen to a CD many times before you hear all the songs. And I mean that in the sense that some songs go out into the air until your heart and ears are ready for them. That is how it has been with this CD. At first, I needed the message of the first song "Rome wasn't built in a day." And then I really really got the message of "You can't take that away from me." And yesterday, as if for the first time, I heard the words to "Birds in the sky, you know how I feel."

Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom in the trees you know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

(I just realized I'm doing a song lyrics Saturday. Hi, Badger!!)

So of course, I have to embed it... (and hey, it's Nina Simone, which is the version I have on my CD)



And the freedom...I am getting there. My staycation starts today after 2pm. Not a lot got done yesterday what with getting pansies from our favorite volunteer, talking for a long time with E about books about Germany...

But I am getting up and writing. And I am coming back here. (GRIN.)

I don't know why I stopped, I love this bully pulpit/soap box. Doing my "morning pages" is different, but this too, this writing for you, writing for an audience, I love it. I eat it up. And I need more things to love in this life.

Pictures this week, I promise.