Sunday, May 3, 2009

Godspeed



I unearthed "Godspeed" a couple of weeks ago and let it shower over Tavish, Caleb and me in my cheerful and cramped office one afternoon, happy tears springing from my eyes. Years ago, I used to listen to it alone in my car and cry tears of grief and depression and lost love, hoping beyond hope that I could one day be lucky enough, good enough, to have a baby of my own to sing this song to.

I had no idea how little it had to do with luck, and how good--perfectly good--I already was. I had no idea the beautiful plan God had for my life, the beautiful boys who would grow like miracles in my womb, take their first breaths on my wet and grateful breast, and become firmly rooted in and wrapped around my brave and worn heart. I had no idea how close my greatest happiness really was--close as a veil against my face.

I let the song and my tears rain deliciously down and marveled at bright-eyed Tavish perched contentedly on my hip and gorgeously curious Caleb standing on my office chair blowing out a candle. Gratitude spun like a thousand sunlit pinwheels in my chest.

The other day I found out that "Godspeed" was written by a father for his three year-old son whose mother was moving with the boy to France to be with her boyfriend. I know a little something about being the kid in a move like that. And now, as a parent, I glimpse the tower of pain my biological father must have lived in after my mother and I left. And in the faces of my little boys, I see how fragile and heartbreak-able I must have been.

Ten years ago, trying to find my way home in more ways than one, I took a strange and magnificent and important drive across the country and back. On the way out west, as I was crossing the state line into Colorado (my birthplace), "Landslide" came on the radio. The snow on the mountains was pink with sunset and the road ahead was turning purple with the coming dark. Weeping, speeding through the falling dark, I sung "Landslide" the way I always secretly have: to him, that daddy I had had to leave so many years before.

And so this evening when I found "Godspeed" and "Landslide" paired together in this YouTube clip, it seemed so appropriate. In a burst, my childhood drizzled like confetti behind my eyes and I felt the way seamen must when a wild storm brings them finally to shore.

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