Random Thoughts

When I was visiting Kirk he played his guitar for me. It was the first time he’d done so. He was a bit anxious about it for a few reasons. First, he’d had a cold/allergies/sinus infection/whatever and his voice wasn’t in the best of shape. In the evening his voice would start to get kind of rough. And he was actually doing a lot better the weekend I was there than the weekend before when he could barely talk at all. Second, he hadn’t played his guitar in so long, he was worried about actually playing the instrument. After a few chords, he had to go get a pick as he said his fingers weren’t used to playing the guitar.

Anyway, he played a few songs for me, Walk the Line and even a little diddy he wrote when he was in college. (He said it was a pathetic song, I thought it was kind of sweet.) He even played “Life is Like a Mountain Railroad.”

My mom and dad used to sing all the time in church. And this is actually the last song I remember them singing together in church. I believe it was a Sunday evening, and I remember mom blowing the train whistle at the end.

As I sat there, listening to Kirk play his guitar and singing, I was reading through a catalog from BBC America. (Lovely DVDs there.) And as he played, I found myself singing along.

Memories came flooding back of sitting at home in the evenings with my parents, listening to my dad play his guitar, my mother singing along with him. Sometimes it was Christmas carols, sometimes it was gospel songs, sometimes it was the Rolling Stones. (Most of the time it was gospel songs. ) But as I sat there, singing along with Kirk, looking at that magazine, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. I could remember my mother doing the same thing. Sitting with a magazine and singing (almost absently) with my father as he played the guitar.

My dad loved to play his guitar. On Sunday evenings when we were getting ready for church, he would (usually) be the first ready, and he’d sit in the living room and strum his guitar until we were all ready to go. Around Christmastime, he would sing almost every evening (or maybe that’s just my childhood nostalgia playing tricks on me again) and he loved to play carols. I remember he loved C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S a lot and would sing it often.

But as I sat there, magazine in my hand, singing (somewhat absently) along with Kirk, I felt suddenly very happy and content. Oh, he makes me happy regardless. But at that moment, I suddenly felt like I was home. Like this was what life is supposed to be. After all, this was what I saw with my parents, and they were the happiest couple I knew. And seeing that in the relationship I have with Kirk… it made me very happy, to say the least.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Family Stuff, love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.