Fare Thee Well...

I was never a big fan of adding music to a page, always worried that somehow it might distract from the reading, but when I write, it's usually with some sort of music pouring into my ears to set the mood and tone of the words I type...

The song playing today is one of my all time favorites, although it should be said that I like Mary Chapin Carpenter's version far better than June's... However when it's free, you take what you can find.

I first heard this song a fews years ago in the movie Fly Away Home. It was one of those songs that just spoke to my heart instantly. It reached right in, wrapped itself around and set up residence like there was no question that it belonged.


It reminds me of good times. When I close my eyes I see the slow ripples left behind in the wake of an oar pushing against the water and the blue, blue mountains above the lake. And I see a family... A small girl standing next to her mother holding a fish up with her hands for the camera to view, happy with simple pride. A family and a camp fire, their faces flushed with an orange glow, laughing, telling stories, their hands sticky from the remnants of s'mores already eaten... Mom filling in a new entry of a camp journal to be left behind. Dad cooking breakfast in a cast iron frying pan on an ancient stove. Amy and I snuggled up in sleeping bags, playing checkers while it rained, feeding deer fallen apples in the yard...


They were simple times. They were the best of times. Precious memories that make me smile, precious memories that make me cry...

Life is all about these little moments. They are the pictures we take, the smiles we share, the days we spend together, the times we spend apart. Made of belonging, made of falling apart, made of love, taken away by time... Minutes, days, months, years, lifetimes...

Moments we may try to re-create but can't, new moments we make with the families we start, with the children we call our own... With new fish on the hook, with new beds in which to sleep, with new names for us to call and be called, with new smiles we hope to share... With the love that is and always will be a part of who we are, together and alone...

With the one true direction we have and will always know...

And I... I will always fly away home...