It always comes back to bite you in the butt

When my daughter was younger, about 8, she began listening and understanding music. She might argue with you that the only music she even knew existed before she turned 16 was from what she heard in my car from a local radio station which only played oldies...but she could have listened to any music she wanted to, within reason...I never stopped her. Nor did I offer her any other types of music to listen to. I didn’t come from a musical family and music is not a big part of my life. It is interesting, however, that whenever I drive her car and turn on her stereo she has been listening to Bach, my favorite composer.

One of the songs that my daughter, Jen, loved was Cat Steven’s "Cat’s in a Cradle". She loved the song and the lyrics and would talk to me about how sad that song was. In a nutshell: It’s about a father who doesn’t have time to spend with his son and his son grows up to not have time to spend with him.

I’ve spoken about this before here and I still regret that day.

One thing that I didn’t share with you, because it was so painful, was that at first when she was waiting for me to finish talking with the neighbor she was humming very loudly so that I could hear the song, "Cat’s in a Cradle". It was her subtle way of letting me know that this was important to her and that this moment might never happen again. Even though I told my neighbor that I had to leave so I could play a game of basketball with my daughter, I continued to stand there with her while we talked away, feeling torn in two, wanting to have a friend and wanting to play with my daughter at the same time.

I’m sharing all this with you because the song came back to mind today when Jen called me at lunchtime today to cancel our dinner date tonight. "Something came up, I have a lot of work to do at home, we’ll have to do this next week", is what she said. "Ouch", I thought. Then the music started playing in my head.

Normally, I wouldn’t mind. But for some reason I can’t stop thinking that since tonight is the season finale of LOST, she is choosing, like I did, something that she’d rather do than entertain me.

Which is fine.

Really.

*sniff*