(Author’s note: Songs of my heart comfort me every day. Truth often disguises itself in song and story. This story is mostly kinda factual except our daughter’s name is Heather. It’s a lovely name but doesn’t pop up in songs often.)
I’ve had a never-ending love for my wife Janet ever since I saw her face as she stood on a bridge in the Japanese gardens in Fort Worth, Texas. (I don’t know if there are Japanese gardens in Fort Worth. Go with it. Love doesn’t make sense.)
Actually, we’d already been married several years. When I looked through the viewfinder of my camera at Janet holding our baby daughter I realized how deeply I loved her and it would be for ten thousand years. The tiny girl helped bring about that epiphany.
We named her Grace, but I always called her Amazing. The first time she cried I thought how sweet a sound it was. By the time she entered kindergarten we shortened it to Mazie. After all, we were from Texas and we could not wrap our lips around any word more than two syllables.
Mazie was a remarkable child–smart, beautiful and adventurous. Janet handled the escapades better than I did. She knew how to pat my hand and say let it be. Like the time Mazie climbed out her bedroom window at midnight to rendezvous with her boyfriend. She was only thirteen years old. Luckily the police brought her home after they picked her up with her boyfriend. They were walking down the street where we lived holding hands. Janet waited a few weeks before telling me about that. I supposed she was trying to think of the right words to make it sound not so bad. Mazie taught my heart to fear.
Then there was the time I was cleaning the living room and found a note from the private Christian school in which we had enrolled Mazie. She and her boyfriend were given an in-school suspension for saying dirty words between classes. Those Christian school kids can be such tattle tales. Mazie explained they watched too much MTV, and it was a bad influence on them.
Eventually Mazie bored of her first boyfriend and went on to another boy who was the epitome of moral rectitude. Mazie quit cussing for him, just as Janet said she would. Shortly thereafter, she dumped the student saint because he thought he had the right to choose what career she should pursue. From then on, Mazie only cussed just a little and was very responsible about everything else she did. And Mazie my fears relieved.
The years went by fast after Mazie grew up, went to work, got married and had a baby of her own. Janet held my hand, and, ooh, our lives were filled with sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere. We hardly noticed the wrinkles and gray hairs that were popping up all over, all over both our faces and our heads.
And then Janet went away, as I knew she would. I appreciated how precious Grace appeared. She hugged me and promised to comfort me until the day when I would join Janet. It will be as if we had only just begun. Because I have a never-ending song of love for her.