A Song for a Winter's Day

My daughters sometimes read my blog.
I'm lucky to have two beautiful daughters.
This was my original reason for making a blog. When I started in 2006 I thought if I died they could find me somehow in the posts, see what I thought worth fighting for,  and have access to my thoughts when they got older and were having a different phase in their life with thoughts and feelings reflecting on their parent, as I often seem to have. You might guess I had cancer and other things going on and fear. Now I see that this illness was feeding my wanting to hold, have, find permanence. Kids, your Mom was not ready to look at reality.  In the end, after quite awhile recording here I've come to the conclusion that was an ego driven process. It resembles my father's long letter rewriting of history, and it occurs to me that it was both about solidifying my presenting a "side" and somehow looking to be well thought of. How silly human pride is.
 A long persuasive essay written to children that surely see you standing in your age, wrinkles, contradictions, and inadequacy-perhaps in your good too. So after I faced that truth, I realized that my children knew my teaching, my life- well enough -and that I was the one struggling with their transition into adulthood because, quite frankly, I adored their unconditional love and it felt like they were flying away. So I am reading a lot of Ram Dass, and working on myself.
To my daughters I now realize what I need to say, everyday, as my mantra is I love you, I always have, I always will. Life is difficult, it is complicated, we are just human making mistakes, learning and trying to find ways to serve others. All my children, especially in my son, I find you facing so admirably the very same world that I tried to face. I know you to be good. Chin up-it's quite interesting to know you. You will make mistakes, you need your humor, and try to notice what is going on with yourself so that you can be of service to others.

So that said, and where that came from-it must be from somewhere-I heard an interesting piece on NPR today. I was driving to get my spouse, feeling rather sick when it came on. It was about choosing a winter tune/song and until I listened for awhile I didn't get what I was listening to. But what it became was a man reflecting both on a very intense and deep song-here you must hear his reflecting on the role of art to his life and meaning. And then he also tells about his father. It was both painful, and like a great glimpse of truth.
One of the most moving things I ever heard in a car.

So you can listen here.

Sometimes a piece reminds me of my life or connects to my experience.
But, this just seemed to stand alone.


But I surely would like my kids to hear it. Just because it is such a personal and deep way of connecting the dots through the arts.

I was challenged about the arts and deeply wounded about using them in my work with students, and that is sad. Spending "too many instruction minutes on art." This piece stands as my answer.
Those words will never be more than dust to me.

If I had to choose a winter song I could never choose a piece better than this one on NPR. But I have been thinking about it in the arc of my life. And I just like this, it's cliche no doubt.



Like many people Coltrane was, for me, something that took me to art, through pain, that healed and stayed. A winter's tale.