If You Don't Know Me By Now

This afternoon I had a conversation with my ex-husband about our kids -- about the school that they go to and whether it is the best place for our son to go to middle school. And I felt so grateful, talking to him, that he so clearly has the best interests of our kids at heart, and also that his beliefs about what is best for them are so in line with mine. Which is a happy surprise given that one of the things that didn't seem to work well for us was parenting together -- and I guess I'd assumed it was because we had different views. In the end, though, we didn't work well, and while it was tempting to blame ending up in that predicament on this thing that I did or that thing that he didn't do, I'm now convinced it just happened, and it's ok that it happened, because we served a huge purpose in each other's lives, even apart from the beautiful children we added to this world.

I was talking to a friend the other day who was second guessing whether he and his wife were a good match because of problems they are having now, after being together for 20 years. I don't think it's useful to assess whether a relationship was ever a good match because it eventually turns sour, but I understand why people do it. They're trying to make sense of something with their minds that's really a matter of the heart. And hearts don't respond to logic.

For me, this song, brought to you by my inner jukebox, captures both the futility of trying to apply logic to matters of the heart:

We've all got our own funny moods

I've got mine

Woman you've got yours too

Just trust in me

Like I trust in you

As long as we've been together

That should be so easy to do

And the heartbreak of feeling like the person you most want to understand you, just doesn't anymore:

Just get yourself together

Or we might as well say goodbye

What good is a love affair

When you can't see eye to eye, ooooh

But I disagree with the implied premise of the refrain:

If you don't know me by now

You will never, never, never know me, Whooooa

Because I think what breaks our hearts is not the possibility that our partner has never known us, but the loss that comes when someone who once seemed to understand you better than anyone else doesn't seem to know you anymore.

After he learned I loved the Simply Red version of this song, my then-husband bought me the CD of the original by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, which I now agree is the superior version. Seal also covered this song -- you can check out that version if you want to, but the music in the original! Get out the kleenex -- it's a heartbreaker even before Harold starts to sing!

True Colors

This song is working for me on a number of levels today. First, I'm sporting some of my favorite footwear -- cowboy boots -- everyone else calls them pink, but I see their true colors, and I say they're red! One of the reasons wearing these boots makes me so happy is that they help me show my true colors -- a big part of me is definitely a cowgirl -- so what if I what I rode today looked more like a bike than a horse? Someday, I was just telling my son the other day, I bet I'll have a ranch in Wyoming. The other thing about these boots that I swear is really just a happy byproduct and not my reason for wearing them is that the mens dig them. It isn't even always a happy by-product -- today when a guy at the coffee shop asked me out it was much more uncomfortable than flattering. I was chatting about it afterward with a friend who had overheard the invitation -- I told him that a guy I used to date warned me not to wear these boots if I didn't want to be hit on. My friend said he didn't agree -- I should be who I am and then just learn to deal with what happens gracefully. Though he didn't say it in so many words, he was encouraging me to show my true colors.

Sometimes I think my true colors scare people a little bit, and I'm not just talking about my footwear. I'm really trying to shake things up in the education policy world and I'm not doing it to be difficult, I'm doing it because I just can't abide failing yet another generation of kids who were promised that an education could lead to a brighter future. We're just not delivering on that promise for so many kids these days, and I refuse to believe that we can't do it better. Today. One of my favorite parts of MLK Jr.'s I have a dream speech is his repetition of "Now is the time!" I considered getting that tattooed on my wrist but my wrists are pretty small and plus, I really never stray very far from the space in which I can hear his words. These, too, are my true colors.

And finally, I'm feeling super grateful today for those in my life who give me the gift of seeing my true colors and loving me for the rainbow that I am!

Sing it Cyndi:

I see your true colors

shining through

I see your true colors

and that's why I love you

so don't be afraid to let them show

your true colors

true colors are beautiful

like a rainbow

Silent All These Years

It's funny how we humans can be confident in some arenas and totally lack confidence in others, or really articulate on some topics or with some people and much less so with others. Often the uncertainty, or fear, comes up either with something or someone new, or with something or someone that comes attached to the weight of something heavy from our past. To get to a place of certainty and confidence, we have to feel supported -- without that measure of safety -- growth is difficult if not impossible.

Because of the weight attached to some events in my past and my inability to feel and express myself freely when I was a little girl, it has always been harder for me to communicate in the context of a romantic relationship. And until recently, the combination of lacking certainty about myself and the lack of support being offered in the romantic relationships I was choosing added up to little growth in that department. This morning I felt the possibility of that shifting.

On my bike ride to yoga class, I heard these words sung by this powerful little woman:

Hey but I don't care

Cause sometimes

I said sometimes

I hear my voice, I hear my voice, I hear my voice

And it's been here

Silent All These Years

And, having arrived at class, as the teacher talked about feeling the earth's support beneath us and having that support allow us to let go, I felt grateful that I am no longer silent, and that I can feel the support of the earth and so many of its delightful inhabitants.

Shelter from the Storm

Maybe it's because it's getting colder outside, maybe it's because my daughter's class is studying homes and went on a field trip to a Habitat for Humanity site, maybe it's because I've recently both given and received a figurative shelter from the storm, but it's this number that's on repeat for me today.

You can check out Bob singing it live in 1976 in this video, but it sounds more like it does in my head in this one, where instead of watching Bob you get to check out a dismembered mannequin. A reasonable tradeoff?

Looking at the lyrics, it seems like maybe Bob was grappling with some Jesus themes along with the usual love, loss and hard times that all his songs seem to be about. These lyrics, for example, if read in that light, make for a racier bible story than I ever heard at church:

Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there

With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair

She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns

"Come in" she said

"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Alas, looks like even the Jesus-infused version of Bob has to deal with loss -- check out the next verse:

Now there's a wall between us something there's been lost

I took too much for granted got my signals crossed

Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn

"Come in" she said

"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And once again, I'm reminded, and so I'm reminding you: better to have had the shelter for a night, or a month, or a year, or a decade, and then lost it, than not to have had it at all.

Only Girl (In the World)

During my workout this afternoon, I heard this song, and it brought back a memory of the early portion of my relationship with my now ex-husband. I think it was New Year's Eve, so booze was unquestionably involved, but I remember wanting him, and asking him, to tell me that he loved me more than he'd ever loved anyone else. I remember how much I (thought I) needed him to feel this way, and how upset I was when he said he wasn't sure that was true. I didn't know then something that Rihanna's song is very clear about -- that it wasn't about whether he said that or not, but whether I felt it was true:

Want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world

Like I'm the only one that you'll ever love

Like I'm the only one who knows your heart

Only girl in the world...

And the fact that I needed him to tell me, well, that suggests to me that I didn't feel it, along with some insecurity on my part at that point in my life. Once I'd worked through all my stuff, I still didn't feel it, and that's when I knew it was time to move on.

Rihanna's pretty stunning in the official video linked above, but I also found two other really fun ones worth checking out: a beautiful instrumental cover by a pianist, and two hilarious black dudes musing about "RiRi's" new song.

Enjoy, my friends, and remember -- trust how it feels, not what they say or what your mind tries to tell you...

She Believes in Me

Last night as I was going to sleep, this song was playing in my head -- I probably haven't actually heard it in at least 25 years -- but out of the depths of my inner jukebox it came. We listened to Kenny Rogers a lot when I was a kid -- my cousins had his greatest hits on 8-track in their old-school van, and my Mom had the cassette tape. I remember at the time, when I heard these lyrics:

And she believes in me

I'll never know just what she sees in me...

The way I heard them, and perhaps the way he meant them, was that she believed in him more than he believed in himself, and saw things in him that weren't actually there. And at the time, in my own longing for love, that's exactly the place it was coming from -- believing that I just had to hope I'd find someone to feel and do the same for me.

Revisiting it now, I hear and feel something very different. The place I'm coming from now is one of letting the love in to help illuminate what's already there, inside me -- that other people can see not because they conjure it but because it's in me. I know it is, even when I'm all by myself, but I can see it and feel it even more vibrantly through the eyes of my loved ones.

And unlike Kenny's conclusion at the end of the verse that I cited above:

...I told her someday, if she was my girl

I could change the world, with my little songs

I was wrong

I know that I can change the world, or at least a part of it, but knowing that others believe I can too is a huge comfort in this time of uncertainty in my life.

The video linked above is pure Kenny, but if you're only going to watch one, I'd choose this one where he's accompanied by Lionel Richie -- they are a surprisingly super-sweet duo!

In My Place

I didn't set an alarm last night, but this morning it was as if I had: I woke up to a song playing inside my head. It took me a while to figure out what it was, because the lyric I kept hearing was "How long must I wait for you?" I googled that, and found Louis Jordan whaling on his trumpet. That definitely wasn't the sound I had going on inside this morning. Eventually I tracked down what I was hearing: Chris Martin & the other boys from Coldplay.

As I listened to the song again and read the lyrics, I knew why it had awoken me. Before I went to sleep last night, I unearthed some pretty heavy feelings about a dark time in my life and in my marriage. It was a tough place to be, and not unlike the one the lyrics describe:

In my place, in my place

Were lines that I couldn't change

I was lost, oh yeah

I was lost, I was lost

Crossed lines I shouldn't have crossed

I was lost, oh yeah

Yeah, how long must you wait for him?

Yeah, how long must you pay for him?

Yeah, how long must you wait for him?

And now, rather than ruminating over the price I paid or the amount of time I waited, I am going to sign off, do a forgiveness meditation, and continue to release any hold that place has on me. Because like the past tense in the lyrics -- that time is gone. I wait no longer.