http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTzGMEfbnAw
One of my songs under "Dad's Song's" in our Itunes lineup used by my daughter and wife and I is "Angel of the Morning" by Juice Newton. One day I asked my wife if she wanted to listen to this song with me through my Ipod at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver as it had an Ipod ready speaker system there in our room to listen to songs through. She got kind of irritated because she is 7 years younger than I and from a slightly different generation than I. She said, "That song is about women who are with a man only for one night that they might love but know they might never see him again. Why do you like it?"
At first I was flabberghasted by her reaction because I really didn't expect this from my wife. So, it took me a moment to try to explain just how important this song was to me. Though it didn't come out until 1981 about 12 years after I started living this way as a young man of 21 I said to my wife, "Well. At age 21 I was trying to just stay alive and if a girl loved me or cared about me whether it was for a night or a week, or a month or a year, it was enough for me to think I should try to stay alive for her because I really had no reason that I could think of to stay alive for myself from about 1969 until about 1973 when my live in girlfriend got pregnant and we got married. After that, I lived so I could stay alive to raise my son right so he wouldn't have some of the problems that I had had to deal with growing up.
My wife said, "If the idea of this song helped you stay alive until I met you then I understand because I really love you, Fred." And then I was pleased my wife finally got just how important this song is to me. For me, it is about how grateful I am to all these women who kept me alive. Because it reminded me of all the men who died during those times because there were no good women to keep them alive. So, I stayed alive to be a good father and good husband and a good person. So, this song is very important to me and always brings a tear to my eye whenever I hear it.
Note: When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s women generally were not raised to face the full harsh truths of life. This was done so that they could be a comfort to men so men would not die directly or indirectly from the harsh truths of life before their time. Since then all this has changed and now there is no real difference between many men and women regarding facing the full harsh truths of life. So that now when two adults get together to share their lives they comfort each other through all the near death experiences of life and sometimes on into the real deaths of their partners. So, a lot has changed from when I grew up. But both now and then it is friends comforting each other through ongoing near death experiences both internal and external.
2 comments:
I wouldn't say that there were NO good women, I'd say that there were not any women around to keep them alive, supposedly. And you seriously need to fix your run on sentences.
Yes. My 15 year old daughter goes to a college Prep School and tells me the same thing all the time. However, I'm mostly going for "Free Association" when I write. When I write from this point of view there is never writer's block. Because there is always something drifting to the top from one's subconscious in this mode. This is also a useful mode when talking to a therapist. So, I guess I find writing this way therapeutic as well. Also, I don't like editing much. So, I usually run what I write through a spelling checker but not always. And if it makes enough sense to me and if I intuit that people hear what I'm saying in a useful way, I leave it. Otherwise I delete what I wrote within a few hours. Because after all if people aren't receiving what I write in a way that they or I find useful then what's the point?
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