The Shortcut

Hannah and I call it the shortcut. In reality, taking it doesn’t really save us any time getting to our destination. It just keeps us from having to stop at a red light so we can wait our turn to go left. It keeps the wheels of the car turning, and, so, it keeps us moving, and that makes us feel we are getting closer to where we need to be.

The shortcut is a secondary road that feeds into my work world and Hannah’s daycare resting just before the main entrance which is governed by a red light. Early this past summer as I approached work one morning I could see from a distance the red light turning from green to yellow. I knew I had no way of making the turn left without stopping as I saw the yellow light transition to red nudging the light into the pattern it must go through before it finds green again. Feeling I knew another way to get to where we needed to be, I quickly whipped our car onto this secondary road. Hannah, not missing a beat, noticed the variance from the daily routine and wondered why we were going a different way. That is when I called it a shortcut. It is also when I had to try to provide an explanation of a shortcut to Hannah.

The next day, we took the shortcut again. Other days arrived and we took the shortcut on those days as well. Soon, we had a new routine. Before long Hannah was calling “shortcut” from her backseat perch as we neared the road.

The shortcut became a way for us to look for the geese sometimes swimming and playing around two different ponds we pass. We also found ourselves looking for a long-necked fowl we sometimes called a stork and other times a heron.

We would drive through a nearly empty parking lot to add another shortcut to the original shortcut before driving across the campus to stop at daycare. It is this short drive when we usually talked about the geese or the other bird-like creatures we may have spotted on our ride. If we hadn’t seen them, we would start looking for them, hoping to see just a glimpse of them somewhere.

Today, I drove that shortcut for the final time with my riding buddy, Hannah, at least for now. She finished daycare today heading off now on her path of being a student, or as much of a student as she can be at age five. A new school for her, new teachers, new routine.

Being five, she may not remember much about her time at daycare as time moves on. She may not remember the names of her teachers or her first friends. That’s okay. There are pictures that can spur thoughts of yesterday sometime later. She probably will also forget the shortcut in a few years.

I may never forget the shortcut though. As long as I work where I do I will have the opportunity to drive it when I want. I understand she may not ever recall the summer we took the shortcut every morning. I will remember it though. Memories can be shared and if her memory won’t take her there, mine will take me there and when it does I will selfishly hoard the good times we shared.

When I take the shortcut I will look for the geese and the long-necked fowl. I may spy a train in the distance chugging through the woods in the distance. I may even hear Hannah’s voice in my mind as she often would look to the eastern sky then proclaim how the sun is waking up.

I’ll take the shortcut from time to time just to keep the wheels of memory moving.

Oh, What Mel Tillis and Ricky Skaggs Wrought

From time to time we all get a song stuck in our heads. Maybe it’s the rhythm of the music that sticks there. Maybe it’s the lyrics. Maybe it’s the way the singer gets into the song. Whatever it is sometimes we all find ourselves running some part of a song through our mind on some endless loop so often that we feel we could burst into insanity if that loop starts up one more time. We might hum the song. We might even softly sing along with it. Or we might just sit in stunned silence while the only thing we process is those words, that melody, that song eating up time and brain cells. I believe I have passed this human experience on to our daughter Hannah. And I blame Mel Tillis and Ricky Skaggs for doing this. Let me explain.

When we are in our car, the radio most likely is playing. Sometimes, a CD may be playing. Usually though the radio is tuned to some local radio station. Since “modern music” abandoned me when I left a specific age demographic years ago, I find I enjoy the songs I remember from days gone by. This means I fit into the overweight, middle-aged white guy demographic that enjoys music labeled with the word “classic” in front of it. So, if I want to hear Journey or the Rolling Stones or John Mellencamp, somewhere on the radio dial is a local station that is pumping out “the songs I grew up with”.

In our particular radio market, there are at least two stations that play “classic” country music, although I slowly see even this slipping away from how I would label such because I seem to hear less and less Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton, Johnny Paycheck and Johnny Rodriquez from them and more and more Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks and Jo Dee Messina. Despite this subtle shift away from the music I like more and toward the music I barely stomach, the radio dial in my car is often on one of these two stations.

One morning, it was tuned to one of these stations when the Ricky Skaggs’ hit “Honey, Won’t You Open That Door” began playing. In the backseat, Hannah caught on to the bouncy tune, I noticed this, so, when the chorus hit, in a rather cheesy voice I began singing along…

“Honey, honey, honey won't you open that door
This is your sweet daddy, don't you love me no more?
It's cold outside, let me sleep on the floor
Honey, won't you open that door?”

Hannah laughed and wanted me to keep singing. So, I did. From that time forward, we would hear the song play again enough times so that the simple, catchy refrain would stick in both our brains. It stuck there enough so that I began to sing variations of it to Hannah. As I would try to wake her up in the morning, I might sing, “Hannah, Hannah, Hannah, won’t you open your eyes, this is your sweet Daddy, it’s time to get out of bed…” I may have even tried to get her to eat something at the dinner table while singing, “Hannah, Hannah, Hannah, won’t you open your mouth, this is your sweet Daddy the broccoli ain’t all that bad…”

The point is we heard the song enough, and wailed along with it enough that it began sticking in not just my memory but also in Hannah’s memory. So, much so that on one recent day driving to school, Hannah started singing the song even before we left our driveway and proceeded to sing it nonstop for a good five minutes. She would sing it in her regular voice and then modify her voice and sing it another way. She would add silly words to the lyrics and giggle. Meantime, I am trying to get us on our way, trying to navigate through our neighborhood to get us to our destination and all I hear are words written by Mel Tillis and performed by Ricky Skaggs over and over. That song, those words, that music quickly found my last nerve to the point where I was ready to scream if I heard it all one more time.

So, Mel, Ricky, I blame you two for all this. It’s your fault the whole thing is just so memorable and catchy. It’s your fault I sang along the very first time. It’s your fault I am hearing this song over and over in my head and am now hearing it from my daughter from the backseat of the car for what seems like hours on end. I hope you two are happy.

And, well, I guess I should really thank you two as well. Thanks for writing and performing a song so memorable and catchy that I just had to sing along in an attempt to make Hannah laugh. Thanks for this song that just sticks in my brain like gum to the bottom of a shoe on a hot summer day. Thanks because it has made memories I can hold to as Hannah grows older. And, maybe, it is enough of a memory for Hannah to one day download the song onto some device that plays back music so she can have it to listen to whenever she wants. And, maybe, she will play it back from time to time, so she can smile, sing along and remember when her sweet Daddy sang it to her.

Ricky Skaggs “Honey Won’t You Open That Door”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTGiD8W57ZU

A Four-Year-Old Questions Meaningful Conversation

It was at the end of a long day. We had finished eating supper when Hannah, spying out a back window, noticed a rabbit in our backyard. This made her want to go outside to the back deck to try to get a better look even though it would soon grow dark. Still, she and I stepped out onto the wood floor. I sat down at our table as Hannah stepped up to a support resting low on the rail which runs around the edge of the deck. From this slightly elevated perch, she could overlook our backyard.

          By this time the rabbit had scampered away. The evening was nice temperature-wise so neither one of us felt the need to go back inside. Hannah saw this time as an opportunity to let our cat, Kayla, come outside. Hannah watched over Kayla as the growing cat carefully stepped onto the deck stopping to sniff at every little thing and playfully paw at a spider web or two.

          The new wore off watching the cat for Hannah so soon she was engaged in some other world while walking around the deck all the talking a-mile-a-minute. Then, she stopped looked at me and asked, “Can we talk about something?”

          Looking back now I don’t recall the specifics of the question. It may have been about how the moon was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds that evening. It may have been about a large white cat that carefully stepped though our neighbor’s backyard then into the woods behind their house. It may have been about how we try to sit down together as a family every night for supper and how that is one of the most important things we do all day. It could have been a number of other things, I just can’t recall. She asked a lot of questions and I tried to answer them all that night. No matter the question what stuck with me then is the essence of that question.           

So, Hannah, maybe by the time you understand all this better you will have come to know that should you ask the question again, ‘can we talk about something?’ that the answer from your Mom and I is yes. You will discover there will be times when your heart or your brain or both will work overtime trying to make sense of something until the only outlet you think will move it along is talking to someone. Sometimes, a friend will do, but other times, it will only do that you talk to either me or Mom or both of us. We’ll be there for you then.

          You should know though when you talk with me and Mom neither one of us will listen or talk back as a friend. We will listen and we will talk but we will do so as something more than your friend will be able to ever do. You see, a friend may let you talk then may agree with you just so you feel better. There is a time and place for that. Some things you need to talk about though will require more than a friendship. Some things you need to talk about will require someone who can listen then talk with you about realities that you may not want to know or accept. You will get that from us. You see your Mom and I are not like your friends. We have a bit more invested in our relationship with you than what you will have with your friends. It’s part of why we sit on our deck to watch the clouds dance with the moon. It’s why we marvel at a neighbor’s cat slinking through a backyard to make a getaway in the woods. It’s why we sit down together at our dining room table each night, thank God for what He provides us, eat our food and talk about our day together. It’s all those moments of talking from day-to-day building trust and love with each other so that when you really need to talk you know without any doubt that you will be able to turn to us. It’s all those little moments that build something beyond friendship, it’s those things that build our family.

          It can be complicated to fully understand. Some words on a page won’t really do it justice. It really is something that is built a little at a time over the course of each of our lives and throughout our years together. Let us know when you want to talk about it.