How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light of the glittering stars
I stand there amazed and I ask as I gaze
Does their glory exceed that of ours?- Home On The Range, Gene Autry
Lately, the moments before bedtime with my son have been increasingly fun. In the earlier days of his life, this time time felt a bit like trying to handle an explosive device without detonating it, while nervously watching the red numbers on the clock slowly wind down to that inevitable moment of explosion. Anxiety would spike as sweat started to pool in the lower parts of my back. I would try desperately to rock him and keep him calm, counting down to when I knew my job was done, and I could hand him to my wife to feed and put him down to sleep. I used to joke that going into his nursery for my bedtime shift with him made me feel a bit like I was stepping into the gladiator’s arena, ready to do battle, wondering who would emerge victorious this go around. I have since learned, through therapy and frank conversations with my wife, that thinking about fatherhood as a competition with my son is, quite literally, stupid, and more indicative of my own flawed perspective than what is actually required to nurture a baby (but, that’s a conversation for another time).
In trying out various ways to soothe him in a more loving manner during those fussier moments of the day, I happened to discover that, much like me, my son enjoys the sounds of old country western, folk, and rock songs (particularly Gene Autry’s version of Deep In The Heart of Texas, which always induces a smile, especially when I clap his little hands together during the ch-ch-ch-ch after Gene sings The stars at night are big and bright). And although I can’t sing worth a lick, he also seems to not hate when, instead of doing the anxious-dad-two-step around his nursery, I actually let my guard down and sing some of those songs to him while he stares and giggles contentedly at his John Prine wall pennant. It’s always those little moments that surprise us with the most love, joy, and connection, I guess.
The joy that comes from those moments of awe and adoration where we actually connect with another, even a baby, over a shared experience, or love of a thing, aren’t a surprise. For me, like many others, music has always provided a way to escape life’s anxieties, as well as an on opportunity to connect with others who shared my love for a particular artist, song, or record. Put simply, music provides a way for us to stake a claim in our existence, leveraging the sounds and lyrics of another to translate our own experiences and emotions back to ourselves. And isn’t that one of the greatest powers of art? To use another’s perspective to better understand our own. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve driven around aimlessly with the windows rolled down and the volume up, letting my mind wander further and further away with each changing track that poured out of my speakers. And while those soundtracks have changed drastically over time, depending where I’m at, music has always been the primary emotional marker on the roadmap of my life.
That’s why it has been so fun to start cultivating, even in his infancy, a connection with my son through music. It almost instantaneously brought back memories I have with my own dad, driving around Dallas in his cherry red Chevy Silverado Z71 (peak ‘90s, baby), when he started introducing me to all of his favorite songs, many of which he gained a love for from his dad. At the time, I remember truly hating those old country, soul, R&B, and folk songs, a fact my dad reminded me of not two days ago when I told him to check out Willie Nelson’s cover of Rodney Crowell’s Many A Long And Lonesome Highway. He started making fun of me for how much love I’ve since developed for Willie Nelson (yes, I have a Willie Nelson tattoo I got on my 30th birthday, which is also 4/20 - there are layers here), recalling how I used to beg him to turn Willie off whenever he would come over the speakers. I recall the conversation around the first time he played me Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain going something like:
Me: “Who is this, dad? Why does his voice sound so weird?”
Dad: “You don’t know who Willie Nelson is?”
Me: “Dad, I’m 7 years old and it’s 1999. I do not know who Willie Nelson is. Can you please turn *NSYNC back on?”
The truth is that those old songs carry so much weight and importance for me because they drill directly down into my roots. That music contains the shared vernacular and stories of wild souls like my family who rambled and raised hell up and down Fort Worth’s Jacksboro Highway. In them, I hear the lilting twang of my Granny and Grandad, the hard-worn backwoods wisdom of my east Texas family, and the Christ-haunted worldview I was raised on. I can also hear the wide-open spaces of America’s Western Frontier, where the other half of my family hails from. The polka-infused Western Swing that evokes memories of watching my Grandma and Grandpa, with their Eastern European and Western American roots, spin around a fair ground dance floor (cue up Fraulein). All told, these songs are important because they constellate the memories and stories I have of those I hope my son is lucky enough to spend some time with, while also hoping that they help him better understand those he might only hear about through the passing down of family lore.
In those quiet moments that I get alone with my son, it is hitting home more and more how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity cultivate a lifetime of memories and relationships with some larger-than-life figures who’ve left their own indelible mark on the world. What I’ve come to realize, and I’ve written about elsewhere, is that each of us are nothing more than the stories we tell ourselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, and those stories are what ultimately get shared with the world. The narrative that seems to be constantly on loop for me, especially when it comes to my view of my own family, is that I am one son in a line of many who’ve wandered down life’s crooked highway, just trying figure out how to leave things a little better off than I found them. And that, while I know I’ve got nothing but my stories, it’s alright if those narratives don’t always paint a pretty picture, so long as I’m sharing the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
So, as bedtime shifts, and those moments with my son start to evolve, I guess I’m already finding myself getting sentimental about the current state of things. While I know I’ll still have opportunities to share stories, both figuratively and literally, it is likely that they will focus more on fairy tales, superheroes, mythical lands, and mystical quests. However, I hope I also find ways to share our family’s own tall tales that reach back into the rich history of our shared past, and that he’ll come to know and love those same characters who have helped shape the very core of who he is. And I hope that some day when he starts looking for how to share those stories with his offspring, some of these honky tonk lullabies will have buried their roots deep into the firmament of who he is, and will also provide him with a framework to keep our family’s music alive long into the future.
Check out the playlist below that I threw together of honky tonk lullabies I love to sing to my son (here’s a link for Apple Music users, too):
