I Am Your Child

This song just does it to me. I was recently watching a video of that song. Just the first three chords send goosebumps up and down my spine. When I was watching the PBS Special this week it had the same affect on me. The emotion that Barry uses in this song just blows me away.

It's not a very long song, but it speaks volumes to me.

I am your child
Wherever you go you take me to
Whatever I know I learned from you
Whatever I do you taught me to do
I am your child
And I am your chance
Whatever will come will come from me
Tomorrow is won by winning me
Whatever I am you taught me to be
I am your hope
I am your chance
I am your child.

The song reminds me that our children (and not just our own children but all children) learn how to be citizens of this world from the adults in their lives. They watch us and they learn how to love and even how to hate. They learn how to treat their spouses from their parents. They learn how to treat us as we age by how we treated our own aging parents. They learn how to react to difficult life choices by how we react to them. They learn how to care for others by how we treat our family, our friends and even strangers.

When I hear this song, I think about the adults in my life and what they taught me. I think about the adults in Barry's life and how they must have raised him to be kind, generous, compassionate and loving. How they taught him to care for his mother, his friends and the people he works with on a daily basis. And how he cares about the world around him and kids in a band in a middle school in Palm Springs. How he always pays it forward by giving back as much as he has received and more. All that he is, he was taught to be. And we are the beneficiaries of that teaching.

This song makes me think about what I say and do and how it affects my children and one day, my children's children. It's not so much what we say that matters, but what we do that makes all the difference.

Contemplating my responsibility tonight,
Texas Fanilow