It is spring. There is gravel crunching and grass reminding me that it is alive and well. The suggestion of a change. My mind has been stuck in two places. Looking forward, at the green, the fresh. I see the wet spots in soil where the last stubborn snow and ice lingered. Days gone by that still have something to give. I don’t know where to stand. I’m warm and shivering. The sky is blue as I’ve ever seen it. I think it’s getting bluer ever year.

I listen to this song more days than I don’t. I realized that the day this song is named for is here. This song that makes me think that whatever it is I am doing or thinking is meant to be happening. That I’m not meant to go any one way, only to be humble and polite and let this fluctuating mass of molecules float around where it will. It will end up where its meant to. Enjoy the ride and stop thinkin’ so much.

I believe this is a perfect song. It makes me so unbelievably sad, and feel so unbelievably right here and now. Breathing the crispest, heaviest air of my life. I listen to it and it brings life into focus. Everything. The new beginning, and the dirty snow melt, hiding in the ditch’s shadows under last year’s dead leaves. Today is April 14th.

When my mind bounces between two different places, eventually it becomes flustered and floats off to somewhere nicer. This is where it goes. Faraway Skies.

It floats and floats and I must reel it back in from the gusting winds and shifting clouds. It has somewhere else to be.

Every night since my son was born, I sing him songs to help him fall asleep. It’s a slow rotating carousel of songs, and there’s not a children’s tune in the bunch. Except for maybe Big Rock Candy Mountain. That’s kind of a children’s song, except for the cigarette trees and the streams of alcohol. And those cursed short-handled shovels. No child should know the horror of the short-handled shovel. But now that I think of it, that’s the only kind of shovel a kid can actually use. Man, life is complicated.

I don’t know what other parents sing their kids, and I’m not sure when kids get interested in children’s songs, so I’ve just been singing him whatever’s been bouncing around my brain that day. I’ve narrowed down ones that seem to work better than others, but I felt I could still be doing a better job. Try to dig deeper and find something that might resonate with a hint of childhood melody while still maintaining some level of intrinsic weirdness, so he has no illusions that he can’t be as strange as he likes. I guess like any parent I’m trying to indoctrinate him, and I’ve chosen my mode of propaganda to be delivered through song.

Lately I've been singing him Little Boxes and I’m Sticking With You. They’re working like the magic that I know they are.

I can’t drive through suburbs without thinking about Little Boxes. I remember using this song to learn to how to play guitar and sing at the same time. My older sister also told me that we used to sing this song at Sunday school, which I don’t remember. Seems like an odd message for a church to send out, but I guess that’s never stopped ‘em before. I always sing this one to him first, cause he’s still awake enough to be receptive to my parental activism I think. Maybe I’ll tell him Malvina Reynolds is his Grandma.

After, I’ve been singing I’m Sticking With You. I used to think this was just a fun, cute song. But in my singing of it, I have come to realize that it actually means everything I’m trying to convey to him. The first time I started singing it to my boy, it finally made sense. It’s a simple song, but these things are complicated. They take more time than you know. The simple ones hold the most.

Plus it’s a fade out, so I can naturally sing it over and over when he inevitably decides it’s more fun to kick and laugh as I do my best Maureen Tucker impression. Maybe I’ll tell him Mo Tucker is his other Grandma. Like a bedtime raga, it goes on and on around the walls and outside the open window where the birds are singing to him too, and it melts away with the sun into the bluest blue that I have ever felt. Over and over and over again.

Woah-oh

I’m stickin’ with you

Woah-oh

I’m stickin’ with you

Woah-oh

I’m stickin’ with you

Woah-oh

I’m stickin’ with you

Over and over and over again. Softer and softer, bluer and bluer, till he’s bringing the fresh air through his nose and his eyes are squeezed shut.

While I sit with him in this rocking chair and the words of these songs and his sleepy babble and my i love yous bounce around the room I feel somehow still like a child myself, unsure how it is I’ve found myself in this moment. I also feel very tired - but very differently - like if I stood up my hip my sag through the floor and my shoulder could pop out from its socket while a long trilling dry xylophone prances down my spine. I feel like I’ve lived in this head for an absurdly long time. Forever, maybe.

I bounce back between those two times forever and stay still. My mind begins to slow. It settles finally where it is most comfortable. Still contemplating a life it does not understand, while a new one is blossoming and unfurling. The beginning of everything. Today is April 14th and I’m sticking with you forever and ever. Bound by simple melodies. Everything is about to happen, right here in this chair.