Too many are simply ignored. My son wanted to be just like me when he was little, too. The notion scared me, broke my heart. Harry bought his son a ball for his tenth birthday, but there was no time for a game of catch. But the kid understood. They always do. In the blink of an eye I went from teaching him baseball to teaching him to drive, and his sister will be right behind him. Every ball game, concert, play, graduation, talent show, award ceremony, I was there. Well, not all, but almost all.
Childhood flies past, and I wanted as many mental snapshots of my kiddies while they still wanted me around as I could get. Back in the song, Harry was a granddad now. All he wanted was a little chat with his adult son, but the young man had no time for his old man—too busy with the new job, and besides, the kids were sick.
The singer realizes that his boy has grown up just like him, fatherhood summarized in four devastating verses. We embraced that song because it was our story. We vowed never to be that father, but at the same time it seemed inevitable. Someday my kids would see themselves in the song just like I did, and they would long for the father they wanted rather than the invisible one that they had.
I may just have scared off the little black rain cloud of fatherhood, that inevitable downward slide into loneliness, with three little words. Categories: featured , From the Stacks , Music. Tagged as: Harry Chapin. As she best described it:. Bottom right corner is Harry Chapin and his son Joshua blog. According to Ms. They stayed civil but lacked the warmth and love that many father-son relationships enjoy. Where would Chapin be without his wife's original poetry?
They were talking about how it all went by so fast and how they could have spent more time, and now the kids are gone. That song put me in the mood for writing a lyric. Naturally, as most husbands do, he mostly ignored her foundation-building song. That is, until Chapin himself had a son. Perhaps the song helped make Harry a better dad.
Thanks to the dueling brilliance of Harry Chapin and his wife, the song works on multiple levels. Ugh, God. It seems too on the nose, in a really sad way. KH: Well, yeah. Were you paying child support during this time? KH: Oh, I see what it is.
KH: Right. Remember that one time when I barbecued? I associate it with all this stuff that may not be true but it has that feeling, to me, where I see the dad and the barbecue. I wish I could forget how long it is. This is in my vocal range. AVC: You also want karaoke to be fun. KH: I know.
It was a karaoke-killer maneuver.
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