That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be
Today I turned on the radio and this song began to play. The woman singing it was Carly Simon. She recorded this in 1970. Like Mozart, she may not have actually felt this way while singing it. So, for the sake of this paper, the artist is not important. What is pertinent was me and my feelings when I met a single woman of intelligence – I fell in love with.
Sometime in the mid-70s, I was heartbroken because I felt I did not measure up to the expectations of a woman I was strongly infatuated with. One of her favorite songs was That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be. I later heard this song but dismissed it because my understandings of life were ... different in my early adulthood, maybe a bit naive.
I believed my lot in life was unique and everyone else was spared difficulties. I thought I was the only one beaten upon physically and verbally. In my family, I was the one who was dealt with the most severely. In my hurt, I didn’t really notice what was happening to my other seven siblings.
You my brothers and sisters know about my so-called blindness and me going to special schools, my stay in a psychiatric hospital and later in an orphanage. This was followed up by me being returned to a home of 8 other siblings and two parents, segregated in a room by myself, ignored, and barely tolerated by my parents. I had no idea the others could have been treated far worse. …until I went to an Adult Children’s of Abuse meeting.
After much therapy and many years of introspection, I now realize the far-reaching implications of this song.
My father sits at night with no lights on. His cigarette glows in the dark. The living room is still; I walk by, no remark. I tiptoe past the master bedroom where my mother reads her magazines. I hear her call sweet dreams, but I forgot how to dream. My friends from college they're all married now. They have their houses and their lawns. They have their silent noons, tearful nights, angry dawns. Their children hate them for the things they're not. They hate themselves for what they are. And yet they drink, they laugh, close the wound, hide the scar. But you say it's time we moved in together and raised a family of our own, you and me. Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be: You want to marry me, we'll marry. You say we can keep our love alive Babe - all I know is what I see - The couples cling and claw and drown in love's debris. You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me on your shelf - I'll never learn to be just me first by myself. Well O.K., it's time we moved in together and raised a family of our own, you and me - Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be. You want to marry me, we'll marry. |
Yes, God has looked out for me. I could have impulsively married one of these women.
SteveS September 9th 2009
