Know it all, Know nothing

You're amazing and I was wrong.

The hospital downtown where my children were born is dark now. Last August all the doctors and nurses moved to a brand new facility across the river. Driving by the old place tonight, I looked at the undressed windows and wondered if they miss the cries of birth and the moans of death. The windows said, you’ve got it all wrong, it’s the moans of birth and cries of death.

I miss the mark with people, too. I’ll see a mother at the park pushing her baby in the swing. “She’s probably still figuring out the new mom thing,” I’ll think. Then her twelve-year old twins will come skidding off the bike trail, pumping devil horns at their baby sister. The mom will glow at me, “They’re the best big brothers!”

Now I’m old enough to keep my mouth shut, at least. This wasn’t the case in my twenties. I remember arriving early at a Philadelphia club one night to get a good spot in front of the stage. My favorite band, The Innocence Mission, was doing a show in support of their new “Umbrella” cd. After a while I got tired of waiting for my friends, so I took a seat at the bar. Between sips of Rolling Rock, I noticed a girl who’d wandered in, looking really out of place. Everyone else in the club was wearing the requisite spectrum of black. She was wearing a floral print muumuu. Her shoulders curled forward and she drifted nervously around the room, unanchored. When one of my friends finally joined me, I pointed her out to him. “Do you think she’s lost?” I asked. “Looks like it!” he joked. A crowd filled in the room around her while we finished our beers.

Twenty minutes later, the girl in the muumuu walked out on stage. It was Karen Peris, songwriter and lead singer of the Innocence Mission.

*

we will squint into the sun
waving madly at the camera
harry, standing in the front
and I will be sitting on his shoulders

when our harry sails in the summer
when our harry will sail away
our harry sails in the summer
far from me, across the sea

he said it is time now he does something
and sent his hope to join the peace corps
I can’t think what I’ll do when my time comes
I cannot see myself standing alone

but our harry sails in the summer
our harry will sail away
our harry sails in the summer
far from me, across the sea

—-“Our Harry,” The Innocence Mission