I discovered tonight that yet another pair of cheap earbuds I bought at the drugstore have broken after three or four uses. That turned out to be a good thing.
We were just back from a scout camping trip that our family attended on Lake Ripley and, after the torrential downpours, hail and lightning moved through the city, my middle son and his friends were making quite a bit of noise playing in the living room. Exhausted, I just wanted to listen to some music and zone out.
But those damnable earbuds did not work
So, I just let my playlist play out loud on my iPad. In fact it is still on now. After a while, my nine-year old walked into my room, sat down on the bed and asked, "What's that song?" Well, it was Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers. The song is on my playlist because my dad, who passed away when I was young, listened to a lot of that early eighties country and the song always stuck in my head because he sang along with it.
The chorus went "Remember my son not to do the things I've done/Walk away from trouble if you can/It won't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek/I hope you're old enough to understand/You don't have to fight to be a man." Dad was never in any real trouble but he was a big man with a temper who I personally saw bend a steel bar. With his bare hands. You knew he was strong but he never used it to bully others or start a fight. The older I get and the more life unfolds, the more I am sure that this lyric is, on some level, what almost every dad wants for his son.
I told my son, "This is a song your grandpa liked." The little guy clearly liked the melody and I have seldom seen him focus in on the story in a song like he did on that one. It's not a particularly great song and the protagonist in the story it tells breaks his own advice by the end, but it was bonding time.
When it was over, I could see in his face that for one of a rare few moments one of my boys was interested in music I enjoyed. I asked if he wanted to hear another song and he said yes. I played him Rainbow Connection by Weezer and Hayley Williams. Again a cheesy song but it has one of my favorite lyrics ever.."who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star/somebody thought of that and someone believed it and look what it's done so far/what's so amazing that keeps us stargazing and what do we think we might see". Just like when I grew up listening to the song as performed by Kermit the Frog on a 45, it soothed him and he layed down down and yawned.
As a parent, you seldom want to miss a chance to fill your child's head with positives and get the them to sleep early so, I played Its a Wonderful World by Louie Amrstrong and he was asleep halfway through it. As he began to snooze, I noted the line "people passing by say how do you do/what they're really saying is I love you."
Then I stared at him and I thought about camp this past weekend, the weather tonight and current events. At camp, everything was very dry. The frogs and toads the kids used to catch and release by the dozens a few years ago are almost non-existent except for two that I know they caught. The lake level was lower than ever. The zebra mussels were everywhere to the point you had to wear shoes when you went swimming. When the DNR warden came by, he told us the carp have been dying and they don't know why. Campfire talk was of 160 degree heat in Iraq.
Then, tonight, we got what seems to be our most common kind of rain now--a downpour that falls too fast and too hard to slake the thirst of the hard-baked ground. Everything runs off. The gentle, steady rainy days and brief thunderstorms of my youth are so much rarer now. The skies look strange and the rain is angry. Are the climatologists right, is there no way to stop my children from having to be adults in a radically different world from the one in which I was raised?
Is anyone ever going to do anything?
Then I thought of the lyrics in those songs again. It is all of our duty to love and care for our planet and other people enough to take take notice of how they are doing. We may not be able to erase the mistakes of those who went before us but we don't have to repeat them. Finally, it starts with an idea..somebody thinks of something and someone believes it and a revolution happens.
I had some tough talks around that campfire debunking climate myths with conservatives (scouts is chock full of them) and some of them no doubt will talk about what a librul nut job I am behind my back. But it is incumbent upon all of us to share the facts we know. It is only too late when we give up.
That is the power each of us truly has to save our world. Personally, I feel like the best presidential candidate on this issue this time around is Sen. Sanders but, let's face it, it is an issue just like the Supreme Court...we HAVE to work our butts off to get the word out and elect a Democrat next November to have any hope at all on this issue so, if Sec. Clinton is the nominee, she has my efforts and my vote.
As I watch my son sleep, I know he isn't thinking of politics. He is hopefully dreaming of being at that camp catching frogs, swimming, canoeing and enjoying a campfire with his brothers forever into the future. We have to keep that possible.