Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
(On growing up, growing old, and trying to remember it all)
The elderchild doesn’t turn seven until Wednesday, but with grandparents spread far in every direction, and friends available on weekends only, we’ve been in full celebratory swing since Friday. This year’s theme is the circus, and we’re giving it a good go, following up a week of trapeze and tumbling camp with a trip to Circus Smirkus with a few friends tomorrow.
The long stretch gives me license to ponder the child she has become, and I’ve tried, turning to memory and the albums that line our bookcases with an eye towards recovering the history that made her the willful, wild child she is today. But though the photos and old journals tell me that she was once a tiny thing, fascinated by beetles and buttons, I’m startled to find that I cannot remember any of it.
I know people say it seems like yesterday, but in my head, time doesn’t work that way. My memory has always been fleeting; my sense of the world always immediate, everpresent, and eternally now. For me it seems like a lifetime since that first moment I fell in love with her — both the idea of her, and the real bloody thing, squalling and blue in the hospital room.
It’s hard to reconcile the past with the present. On the ground, my daughter is a powerful personality, gleeful and curious, a boundary tester and a bossy bessie, into magic and circus tricks, fishing and fairy houses and the little boy next door. Too big to carry, too smart for her own good, she stays up for hours in her room after lights out, drawing furtive messages on the back of her knees, reading in the wan light of the hallway just like her Daddy did when he was little.
In my head, I accept that photos do not lie — that this same lean, lanky womanchild who shares my preference for figuring out over mastery, and treats me with scorn when I do not know what she knows, was once the tiny child I taught to skip and run, fly and dream. But in the autobiographical existence we share each day, it seems like she’s always been the way she is now. And it worries me that I can’t remember the little girl she’s outgrowing.
If the smaller self is somewhere in the hidden recesses of my aging heart, it is walled away, overwhelmed by the daily realities of our willfullness and the struggle for selfhood.
I miss it every moment of my life.
- Loudon Wainwright III: Daughter (orig. Peter Blegvad)
(from Strange Weirdos: Music From and Inspired by the film Knocked Up, 2007)
- The Waifs: From Little Things Big Things Grow (orig. Kev Carmody)
(from Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs of Kev Carmody, 2007)
- Suzzy and Maggie Roche: The Love’s Still Growing (orig. Carly Simon)
(from Bleecker Street: Greenwich Village in the 60s, 1999)
- Mary Chapin Carpenter: Grow Old With Me (orig. John Lennon)
(from Party Doll, 1999)
- Solas: I Will Remember You (orig. Sarah McLachlan)
(from The Hour Before Dawn, 2000)
- Randy Newman: Remember (orig. Harry Nilsson)
(from For The Love Of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson, 1995)
- Eddi Reader: Who Knows Where The Time Goes (orig. Sandy Denny)
(from Medicine EP, 1996)
- Tim O’Brien: Forever Young (orig. Bob Dylan)
(from Red on Blonde, 1996)
- Livingston Taylor: Isn’t She Lovely (orig. Stevie Wonder)
(from Ink, 1997)
Previously on Cover Lay Down: Eight stunning covers of Who Knows Where The Time Goes, plus two more from another day.
Category: Uncategorized
July 12th, 2009 at 2:03 am
Have you heard Audra Mae’s “Forever Young”? It was featured (and quite deftly, in my opinion, but I’m biased) in an episode of Sons of Anarchy, and I absolutely fell in love with it. Mr. O’Brien’s version is nice, too, but I don’t think I’ll ever find a version prettier than the Audra Mae cover.
Happy birthday to your daughter, in any case. I can’t speak to the rest of it, I’m afraid, or I would try.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:08 am
The Waifs track is stunning isn’t it? The Paul Kelly version is wonderful too.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:53 am
@ Tintin: wow, the Audra Mae cover is gorgeous. Thanks for sharing it.
@ Agnes: I like the Paul Kelly, too…but the Waifs cover is sweeter, so I figured it was more apt for my little girl.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hey, BH ~
Lovely post - my daughter is soon to be 28… and has brought joy every minute of my life (even when she’s giving me grief…
Happy birthday to your darling almost-seven-year-old - this song (If I Had a Daughter by Terri Hendrix) is not a cover, but it’s one of my favorites to express the emotions I feel about my blessed girl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp_pA89117Q
P.S. Synchronistically, I’d already planned to submit one of Terri’s tunes for this week’s SMM theme!
July 13th, 2009 at 9:50 am
My wife and I used that version of “Grow Old With Me” as the first song at our wedding, amazing cover.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Well, Susan has me trumped, but mine are 18 and 21. And I’ve never enjoyed parenting more! My boy - 21 - is spending his summer in Ireland, working on organic farms in trade for room & board. My girl is enjoying her brief freedom from high school before the fear and fun of going away to college kicks in this fall. So enjoy seven, and know that seventeen is just a couple blinks away… but it’s all good!
July 14th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Makes perfect sense, nice choice!
July 18th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Very nice and well put posting. And congrats to you on 7 years of fatherhood! Your “dad” posting always turn this father of 2 young ones into a big wimpy mush ball. It doesn’t seem fair that time only goes faster the older they get.
Thanks for the public reflection and always great cover introductions.
July 25th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Beautiful post.
How come you never respond to relies though?
July 27th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I do what I can, Zach — and I sincerely appreciate every comment and reader — but sometimes it’s hard enough to find time for blogging!