All I know is… I love you, yes, I love you…
John Butler Trio has a sweet song called Peaches and Cream and the previous lines are sung over and over in it. It’s ringing through my head on an almost daily basis here along with occasional outbursts of rebel songs like Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel) and Somebody Loved (The Weepies). They’re “rebel” in that they’re something other than the one song almost perpetually asserting itself in my mind.
I’m liking how moments in time find a way of playing and re-playing their magic sometimes at will, seemingly apart from my own bidding. This past Saturday is the day that holds the moment that contains the song that won’t quit.
My daughter, Marion, sang and played her guitar for a small group of folks at a local coffee shop. She went from avoiding such things to just suddenly deciding she’d do it. And not just play, but sing. I was nervous.
(so was she)
And excited. (ditto)
All mama-bias aside, she rocked it beautifully. Her instructor was bowled over since he’d not heard her sing before or play her guitar so loudly and confidently. It was a crossover moment. One in which she chose to embrace her strength, her talent. I beamed for hours, uncertain if I was more thrilled that she’d done so well (I know what she’s capable of but I know the power of the fear of being out in front!) or that she’d embraced what’s been brewing for so long.
And then the week was awash beyond that with so much else, ridiculously full to overflowing, moments and events asserting their energy all over the place. While this one song…and especially just this one line…
All I know is…
All I know is…I love you.
And that’s it, isn’t it?
We can be awash, wrecked, buoyed, bolstered, catapulted, bolted (like I was this morning at 3am when my intruder alarm went off for no reason), flooded with so much to do, plan, grow, show, trash and build and it’s all about that one encompassing, nurturing, growthful, giving reality…
love. And love’s vision of building beyond the moment into something sustaining more love and more growth. Do we know this? With every fiber of our beings? Or do we do, go, fret along the trail and hope for lil glimpses, gulps and spills of it?
All I know is…
And it’s all we can really afford to know with any certainty and it’s the one thing we can’t afford not to know.
Love.
J. Ruth Kelly 