Here's to my daughters and their mother!

About once a week I ride to school with my youngest daughter. It's always interesting. Sometimes we talk about things. Other times she communicates through music. This morning she plugged her Ipod into the radio and played a song I've never heard of by some songwriters I never heard of. She didn't say a word, but I knew it was not a random selection. It was as if she wanted to introduce me to a friend she had already met who had something I needed to hear. I asked her who it was, and she said, "Us and Our Daughters."

Without knowing anything else about the couple singing this duet, as a  father of three girls, I could relate to the name they had chosen for themselves, and the words of  this raw "under-produced" track began to sink in.  The couple sounds tired--a good kind of tired. The kind of tired that comes after years of making ends meet but forgetting the beginnings. The kind of tired that puts a head on a shoulder with a deep breath and  "I love you" veiled in a sigh. See if you hear it, too. My daughter has no idea that the song she played on the way to school has been on my mind all day.

There is honesty in these tired voices and in the written words on their webpage. Imagine a couple, thirty-something, with two little girls at home, and having gone through what their home-page says "Last year was a harder year for us and our love but we walked through it..."  Like I said, I could relate. And hearing the song again on-line tonight reminded me of a short verse I wrote for Julie fourteen years ago on the eighteenth anniversary of our engagement:

"If time could somehow be reversed 

to change what might have been,

I'd choose the life that we've rehearsed

and do it all again..." 

Remember when we were young?
Our hearts they would beat like a drum,
like a freight train runnin’ on a Mississippi track,
but faster like that…
Remember when we felt free?
Free to be anything?
Time was on our side and everything was fine.
The day was ours and the night.
How do you and me keep this burnin’
when the whole world has gone crazy?
How do you and I keep the spark alive
Well, I’ve been thinking lately...

We should sail away to some distant place
Forget each others names and faces
Fall in love all over again
Tell me we can get back to…remember when.

Remember when she first cried?
We joined along that night.
The tears were runnin’ down our tired faces
To the sound of God’s grace…
Remember when you held me close
The wind it was spinnin’ round us
I couldn’t tell the difference between the sky and sea
lost in each other, just you and me.
How do you and me keep this burnin’
when the whole world has gone crazy?
How do you and I keep the spark alive?
Well, I’ve been thinking lately.

We should sail away to some distant place…
Forget each others names and faces…
Fall in love all over again…
Tell me we can get back to…remember when…
…remember when…
…We should sail away to some distant place
Forget each others names and faces
Fall in love all over again
Tell me we can get back to…
remember when…remember when…

Lyrics by: Phillip & Lia LaRue
Performing Name: Us and Our Daughters
Album: Songs about Us / “Remember When”