Sing Along

We three head out on a Friday afternoon for the local video store. Its movie night. Its nearly 6pm so I have the radio on. Rio asks, “put on some music.” I hit the CD button and Michael Franti and Spearhead set the car on funk. “Not that one, the one we were singing to.”

He’s recalling when, a few days ago, we were coming home listening to Jim Cuddy. Over my own singing, and the melodious sound of Cuddy’s crooning, I could hear Rio is singing “Maybe sometime….” I looked in the mirror and was amazed to see him singing at the top of his lungs.

“You know the words,” I asked.

“I just followed along with you.”

He’s heard them many times.

I love the song of the same name off of Cuddy’s The Light that Guides you Home.

“Well its all right now, that was the way we were, but there’s no sense in changing that now…..Well maybe sometime, maybe some time, maybe some time….”

The sun pours through the windows of the car. Silas is content. He watches out the window, and turns to watch his brother. Rio is singing along again. I feel the cold fire wash over me like rain and turn the mirror so I can see his angel face while he sings. I sing too, in bliss, entangled with this child who is more beautiful than the sun.

I used to think my life was supposed to sound like a Blue Rodeo song. You know, peddle steel guitar, when the girl always leaves in the end. Not anymore.

“Well the story will end and we’ll never know just why. There’s never a chance to say goodbye. But maybe sometime, maybe some time, maybe some time…”

He’s getting most of the words, and belting out the chorus. He’s five; he can’t know the kind of sorrow that sleeps behind those words, but he’s heard me sing them a thousand times, and knows what its supposed to sound like.

In time he will. In his life, he will love and lose many times. His heart will grow wise. And hopefully he will never grow so foolish as to fail to love again.

Maybe sometime.