Wish you were near
wish I could see your face
The weather's nice, it's paradise
it's summertime all year
and some folks we know, they say hello
I miss you so
Wish you were here
I still have a faint mark on my finger - where my older sister nicked me with a butterknife.
I was no older than seven or eight, and we were in the bunkbed at our lake house. From the top bunk, I'd reach down, trying to pull her blankets off or pull her hair or grab her book.
But one time, she was ready for it. She told me later - OK years later - that she was sorry. The crying and ensuing punishments are just faint memories, unimportant in the cosmic time-stream. But I do remember the band-aid. It was way too big for my seven-year-old pinkie and didn't really help.
That butterknife cut left a small, almost indiscernible scar. And I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
Years later, my sister would ask me to show her. Or to show it to one of her boys. Or a niece or nephew.
Sometimes I'd get a hug. Me, as a man in her kitchen, her children and dog watching, bewildered by sympathies from long ago. But her arms around my neck were not for apology or sympathy; they were for the love of our shared childhood; of secrets and memories only we could know.
And that faint scar was a reminder.
A reminder of the days of autumn, when we shared a bunkbed. When we listened to the crickets through the open windows and the muted voices of our parents and grandparents through the bedroom door. A reminder of 1976 and 1977, of summer mornings, riding our bikes to swim lessons at Memorial Park; towels around our necks, bike locks in our baskets. A crumpled dollar bill in someone's pocket.
We were as free as we would ever be - even though we didn't know then. And wouldn't, until many decades would pass. Until then, we would come to know - and share - the joy and sorrow that life would bring us, once we passed beyond those blissful summer days.
Memories that only we could understand. Why we'd hug tightly, there in her kitchen, amidst all those other satellites that circled and filled her life. She would become the center of everyone's universe - just like she had been for me, for as long as I could remember.
She was summertime all year. She brought a kind of beauty into the world like a sunset brings to a beach. Like the crickets bring to a summer evening. Like pumpkins and apples in the fall.
Her kindness was so radiant, her soul so beautiful, that only she could raise a butter knife at me as a father of four and threaten me upon the slightest infraction. She'd be making a sandwich and hear me say something. "Don't think I won't," she'd laugh.
And this afternoon, I wished she was here. I wished that she was still the center of my universe.
I cried and felt better. I looked at my finger and I thought about the hurts that heal.
And I thought about others that seem like they never will.
Citations:
Wish you were here
Released January 11, 1999
Format CD Single
Length 4:00
Label Mercury Nashville
Songwriter(s) Skip Ewing
Debbie Moore
Bill Anderson
Producer(s) Carson Chamberlain
Wish you were here - Mark Willis
No comments:
Post a Comment