Things I wish my daughters will read, Ch. 3

"Greenlander"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPeykShUVA

I remember listening to this song in about the year 2002, when you both were still babies.

I had an old mp3 player back then.  They probably had ipods back then, but this player wasn't an ipod. 

It probably could only hold about 30 songs.

It was bitter cold, and I was out jogging down that road between Uncle Martin's house and your house.  Where in the summer time they will hang huge cat fishes on the utility pole.

Over and over I jogged that one mile loop listening to music.

Sometimes I pushed you two in a carrier around that loop.

Back then I wasn't the skinny guy.  My parents joked when they saw me that I was getting to be the chubby lawyer.

Looking back, I now have this sort of this mantra justifying and explaining what happened.   It goes something like this, though reality is never as simple as what we retrospectively create about it:

Back then I didn't go out in the evening.  For whatever reason, I did not go out alone.

Back then, I watched TV

Back then moving to Illiopolis was not good for me

Back then for career reasons I moved to Edwardsville

Back then, I started having panic attacks

Back then, I left you to be raised by your mother

Then I started going out

Then I started going out all the time

Then I became the skinny zen divorced guy.

Then I rationalized my own selfishness

On an icy island north
In the woods beside the church
We can bury crimson lockets filled with dirt
And when the April thaw
Brings us out again
We can bless the arrows
And the sun won't stall
And the land will never fall

On virgin fields we'll skate
Stand by children we'll create
Like the arctic wind we spin
A windmill's rose into the threshing soul
You can't thresh the snow
When the snow is sending
There's no divine grove
You can see the blankets go

Everything I did was right
Everything I said was wrong
Now I'm waiting for the night
To bring the dawn
Into the only room where the fire's warm
Where we keep our vices warm
And it's all that's left
All that's left is vices torn