I really want to see you
I REALLY WANT TO SEE YOU
I’ll be honest. I didn’t realize who you were all those days I drove speeding down I-80 listening to you call out to your sweet lord. What lord? I implored the radio. Cranked up the volume. Show me, I demanded.
I parked by the bay and looked for your lord. I wanted to feel you. I wanted to see you. I wanted to be with you. I searched the rippling water of the bay and through sun rays streaming through Alcatraz Island. My sweet lord why don’t you show your face? I begged and thought the power of your voice would lead the way. Bring this magic into my life. Savior. Save me.
Instead I found myself in a hospital full of the living dead. It was 1987 and my whole world was dying while you were singing of your lord. My grandmother’s heart was measured in electric green peaks and valleys. Her fingers held tubes instead of cigarettes. I looked out the hospital and didn’t see my lord or your lord. I saw sidewalks, parked cars, and strangers crossing streets.
But I believed you when you sang that he would come. I believed you when I left my grandmother in that room, and the nurse told me everything would be okay. I believed you when I fought my demons with every bit of powder I could stuff up my nose and booze down my throat. My sweet lord.
But then it came. Years later my daughter was born. She opened my eyes. Showed me how to see. Taught me to believe in magic, and by golly, she taught me to love the Beatles. She taught me how to see you, be with you, and hear you.
It was 2015 when you became my man. You with your unibrow, your Gretsch guitar, and that sly grin. I love your loyalty to your guitar. That you don’t feel the need to switch girls out, but instead know that you can pull god through the strings of your one true instrument held high with pride and high with the high of the music you played.
Yeah, I found your sweet lord. It rings in the sound of my daughter’s laughter as we watch A Hard Day’s Night for the 100th time, and you show me how to be quite prepared for the eventuality of unconditional love. My daughter’s squeals merge with mine because I do squeal when you and John take the stage on the Ed Sullivan Show. You cock one leg just so, tap your foot, curl one lip, raise one side of that amazing unibrow, and let your Gretsch rip. God, you knew how to play that guitar. My sweet lord.
My grandmother is dead. The days of the Great Die Off are over, but you have given me new life decades later. You and my daughter taught me to be giddy and how to be the kid I never got to be. My sweet lord really is the simplest thing. A mother and daughter singing along, side by side, our smiles bigger than the Golden Gate.