Hum.

If you could feel my fire reach for you
flames draw high out to you
streetlight shines through my window,
it trembles for you
take my heart, there you go.

He never listened to anything much harder than Tool, and tends to look vaguely pained when I twist up Sepultura or Motorhead, squinces a little for Breaking Benjamin and kind of wonders aloud where he went wrong in raising me when Type O Negative pounds a steady beat through my skull.

He tried.

He drew on what I was born listening to-The Eagles, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, CCR, and then when I was more sophisticated (at a whole ten years old), he and Caleb began to feed me a steady diet of Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Queen.

You can blame Lochlan for my musical quirks. He sings new songs or plays them in the truck until I follow him around begging for the artist name or even title and then off I go to memorize the words. Like my intense love for all things Switchfoot. Like Toto's song Africa. Like for this freakish new attachment to The Midway State's Atlantic.

(Such a tiny pleaser, if you will but loathe to let anything new slip past her because don't forget her hearing is set to a timer that is counting down the precious years left. She is still working away diligently filling up her head with the most poignant music she can find, be it hard OR soft. She doesn't care, though she is very specific if she doesn't like something, and incredibly possessive if she does. So every band she loves is her favorite and every song she likes is the Best Song In the Universe.)

Little changes decades later. He is even still characteristically pissed at me every time I mention the 'terrible' circus portion of my upbringing in public. Which is funny because it wasn't terrible. Well, most of it wasn't but now when he grates against my personality landmines or intensive shortcomings it's never clear who he is more disappointed in, me or himself.

He beams with pride when I do something well, or something surprising, but he is the most impatient teacher when it comes to reiterating things I can't retain at all because I don't really care. Why work at swimming long distances when I can put my arms around his neck and get a lift into shore? Smooth shifting in a standard? Never going to happen. Why get street directions when I can just wait for him to take me there and then I have my favorite company along for the ride? Survive a day without trying to stick myself to him like a barnacle when he's very very busy? Nope. Give up already.

Failure is not an option. Now turn up the music and just pretend I'm not even here, okay? Well, maybe just move over a little bit. Yup. There.