A (Then) Four-Year-Old Questions Being In A Hurry

Almost every morning in our house is a chaos at its finest. Each one of us is still sleepy. Each one of us is hungry. Each one of us has to get ready to be somewhere soon and the clock is ticking.

It doesn’t end there though. We still have to get to wherever we need to be. This sometimes means a whole new adventure takes place beginning with how long it takes for us to load the car. Once we are on our way we face traffic. During that ride I nervously glance at the car clock constantly just trying to gauge our estimated time of arrival to wherever we may be going.

One recent morning we experienced a typical morning: waking up, getting up, eating, getting dressed and then getting out the door and on the way to our destination which this particular morning was daycare for Hannah then on to work for me. Out of this classic chaos came another question posed by a then four-year-old that made me stop in my tracks.

On the ride this particular morning we listened to a CD of some of Hannah’s favorite music. Ironically, the thirty or so songs on this CD include a large section of Christmas songs and you know, that’s ok even during springtime. So, don't judge me! As we neared daycare, Hannah asked when we got there if we could stay in the car to listen to the rest of the song that was playing. I told her we would just have to wait and see.

Moments later, we pull to the curb outside daycare. As luck would have it, a new song had just started. Before I even stopped the car Hannah had asked to listen to the full song. I stopped the car glancing at the car clock noting how I was a couple of minutes later than I really wanted to be but still I told her we would listen to the rest of the song. I did though unbuckle my seat belt then turned to unbuckle her from her car seat. When I did Hannah stepped out of the car seat then asked a question that hit me square between the eyes, “Why are you in a hurry?”

A bit stunned, I asked Hannah if I was always in a hurry. She replied yes. We both laughed briefly then listened to the rest of her song. Of course, her question dangled in the air waiting to be pondered at a later time.

In our continual quest to look at and attempt to answer the questions of a then four-year-old, this time we look at “why are you in a hurry?”. Frankly, I have no ready answer to that question. It is a question that tends to make me look inward and, frankly as uncomfortable as that can be sometimes, that question can be a good thing to ponder from time to time.

The question though is one that is universal. It is asked by many people everywhere all the time. It is enough of a question that we write songs about it such as “You Can’t Hurry Love” or “What’s Your Hurry?”. We even build plots around the theme on TV shows such as the Andy Griffith Show, well at least on TV shows that don’t focus on making heroes out of zombies or serial killers or that don't portray decent people as schleps or losers.

So, Hannah, as you travel the road of life sometimes you will hear others ask you, and maybe you will find you will even ask yourself, “Why are you in a hurry?”. I don’t really know an answer to the question for anyone at any age whether you are five-years-old or one hundred and five-years-old. Yes, in some way, the hurry is life, it’s the getting-to, it’s the going-from, it’s a zillion different activities that interest you, it’s all the obligations you make, it’s the deadlines, it’s life at its most raw and full. Still, when you hear this question please always listen to it. Always stop to think about what it means. Maybe it’s someone’s way, maybe even your own way, of saying there is more to life than the rush to do things and to go places. There is value sometimes in sitting still and just letting life be.

I understand the value held in that question because one morning a then four-year-old stood on the console of our car outside her daycare. Even though we were a couple of minutes late that blonde-haired, blue-eyed four-year-old sang along with the song on the CD player in a voice I just know was the voice of an angel and I marveled at how wonderful things can be found in life's simple, quiet moments . Later that day, I found myself wrapped up in work deadlines, family worries, societal concerns and seemingly dozens of other things that nipped away at me. When things seemed to overwhelm me, I slowed down enough to remember those few moments when we stopped being in a hurry and took time to be still and just let life be.

The Supremes “You Can’t Hurry Love” 

J. Geils Band "What's Your Hurry?"

The Andy Griffith Show "What's Your Hurry?"

The Andy Griffith Show "Man In A Hurry"

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