My daddy used to sing to me,
“I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses.”
It’s a song he used to believe in.
He would belt it in his southern drawl,
And baritone vocals,
“And the voice I hear falling on my ear, the son of god discloses…”
And I would listen, from the backseat of the car, from the top of my bunk bed, from the back yard as he pulled weeds.
Then the tsunami hit Indonesia.
And my daddy stopped singing hymns.
Stopped saying God, unless it was in a disgruntled. Goddamnit, murmured at my step mom.
I grew faith, from the words of my dad, I knew that his singing meant that god really could walk and talk with me in a garden to let me know about my own salvation.
I don’t know what happened in my father, when that switch was made.
But I know that it was the switch in him that triggered the switch in me.
Music. It has that power.
To guide you, to give you strength.
So strong you find nothing else to follow, and even scripture cant confirm the same words from you.
That’s why we sing the doxology.
And anything by Aretha Franklin.
Music captivates children, and adults too, but especially kids.
They get the metaphor seeping into their veins.
It becomes their vitality, dripping with rhythm
Spinning with time, and it’s the only way they know their alive.
So when my daddy stopped singing church hymns,
Day by day I would sweat the words from my veins and lose the little bit of faith I had left.
I don’t even remember what his voice sounded like when he sang them.
But occasionally I dream,
And I’m in the back yard of that house, the blue and white one, with a rickety privacy fence, and stained glass window in the back.
See it?
I’m climbing up in the crab apple tree and playing with a sling shot, as my brother is below attempting, (and failing) not to get hit.
And all the sudden I hear the song,
My dad’s in the garage. Up stairs, probably trying to find one of the thousands of books he now wants to reread. Of course the only one he can actually get through more than once without his ADD kicking in, is nestled under his pillow. The Big Book, Blue books, not bibles.
We aren’t a religious family, we don’t read those.
Daddy’s singing is all the worship we’ve ever needed.
And everything is normal again in the world.
Everything isn’t so real, faith exists. The world moves on, in circles, not waves, it doesn’t crash and fall and leave you seasick, and whip lashed from the exposure to people.
Get it? Daddy sings. Life is normal, life is good. Daddy stops singing, something’s off, wrong, broken.
But I wake up from those dreams.
Just before I hear what I’m waiting for.
“and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”
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