Now in this corner of the night it is all quiet save for the sound of music coming from the end of the hall. A song from the 80s with a fiddle, a song they played while Lily was visiting. It is so distant and low it’s like the sound is coming from another time or through a dream. And then he can rewind the tape of his own memories and play it back. They are at the kitchen table and she has it queued on her phone. They are all together like old times. It’s all they want, to replay the past. Now they know it’s not always this way, there are long gaps where they don’t see one another and that’s just part of growing up. Both kids now have the knowledge you gain some in adulthood but lose a lot too.

He pictures their younger daughter Charlotte in her room studying with the fairy lights and her books on her bed playing the song on her phone. Her sister left home before anyone thought she would and ever since then Charlotte just wants to make up for lost time. You never can. The feelings are always mixed like that. Grateful but sad, reminded of the time they didn’t have.

He has watched Charlotte lose parts of her childhood and each time it comes with a form of knowledge she didn’t want. Like the time she really understood what self harm meant. And she was too young for that. But there is a part of her it provoked, perhaps her spirit, that rose up to protect the child in her.

The song is only about three minutes long. You get toward the end and it goes a cappella and then the fiddle comes back in for the resolution. Now they are all back at the table playing board games and singing along and Lily is still here for the rest of the week. Charlotte is somewhere else with her books not feeling sad but uplifted by the song, taken back to where she wants to be, a place that just was.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, parenting

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Nostalgia, parenting