idk y
I just got done practicing singing Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” from youtube. I’m thinking about singing it for my recital, as a dedication to my mom and dad. It was “their song”, and I always heard them talk about it, and I can remember my dad singing it in the car when it came on the radio. He’d get this look of pure love and sing it right it to her-she smiles back and suddenly they look like they’re in their 20s again. You can see and feel them reminiscing, and I just remember I always had that curiosity of why does this song always make them look at each other like that? I knew it was something I wouldn’t know until I was older-there were a lot of things I accepted with ignorance like that-if you don’t get what I mean, you’ll see it as a recurring pattern in my life. When I didn’t understand something as a child, I chalked it up to being too young. My questions about life would be directed to my older brother and sister, who would then say “I’ll tell ya when you’re older” which I never believed, and so I’d shrug my shoulders and wait to get older.
This feeling I had when their song came on was one of those impossibly adult feelings. I asked Katie and Nick, but when they said they’d tell me later, what they meant was “We have no way of explaining it to you”. There are just some things we can’t make other people understand-like why you love someone so much, or at all, really. I didn’t understand how a song had that power. Until I listened to it myself and learned the words. That song was a perfect description of mom and dad’s relationship.
“Don't go trying, some new fashion / Don't change the colour of your hair”
(Dad said he’d love mom even if she got gray hair; he didn’t want her to color it)
“What will it take till you believe in me / The way that I believe in you?”
(Dad pursued mom adamantly-at first she was bothered. But when he stopped calling, mom missed him)
“I said I love you, and that's forever / And this I promise from the heart”
(They were married for 27 years until his untimely death, the entire length of time he was with her he spent loving her)
Now I’ve just sung the song six times, and I’m picturing them together at various weddings, parties, or times near a radio and their song coming on, and they have that perfect, deep love for each other, just like the way it always was.
This feeling I had when their song came on was one of those impossibly adult feelings. I asked Katie and Nick, but when they said they’d tell me later, what they meant was “We have no way of explaining it to you”. There are just some things we can’t make other people understand-like why you love someone so much, or at all, really. I didn’t understand how a song had that power. Until I listened to it myself and learned the words. That song was a perfect description of mom and dad’s relationship.
“Don't go trying, some new fashion / Don't change the colour of your hair”
(Dad said he’d love mom even if she got gray hair; he didn’t want her to color it)
“What will it take till you believe in me / The way that I believe in you?”
(Dad pursued mom adamantly-at first she was bothered. But when he stopped calling, mom missed him)
“I said I love you, and that's forever / And this I promise from the heart”
(They were married for 27 years until his untimely death, the entire length of time he was with her he spent loving her)
Now I’ve just sung the song six times, and I’m picturing them together at various weddings, parties, or times near a radio and their song coming on, and they have that perfect, deep love for each other, just like the way it always was.