Well … All Right
I wrote this for a friend’s zine when my older daughter, now eight, was a few months old. Father’s day seems like as good a time as any to repost it.
My daughter Casey was born in January, and so far the singing-to-the-kid duties have mostly fallen on me. If I’d thought about it before she was born, I guess I’d have imagined that I’d have sung mostly kids’ songs — some Woody Guthrie, some of the lullabies that my folks sang to me — but it hasn’t worked out that way just yet. I’m not quite sure how, but William Blake’s “Jerusalem” has wound up in heavy rotation, along with a slowed-down version of “Surfin’ Bird” that really seems to soothe her.
If she’s pitching a fit, I usually sing whatever happens to pop into my head, or hum nonsense until it resolves