Monday, February 11, 2013

A thought about raising a daughter

My oldest child is my only daughter, she is off at college doing her thing.  I guess we all miss our children when they move away, and I miss seeing her.   I remembered that when she was very young, maybe 3, I decided that I would going to play only female singer/song writers for her in the car.  Let creative women be the soundtrack of her childhood.  Since I drove her around a lot, headed toward half the rides before she was 8, and most everyday for the next 8 years after, she heard the songs I programmed for her constantly.  There was a revival of pop/rock woman singer/songwriters in those years, and we listened to many of them.

The day she turned 13, I picked her up from the Rec Center after swim practice and played her a male group - The Who's Greatest Hits.  She said, "this is really good, did you just get it?"  She didn't know that in my 6 CD changer, I kept a CD just to play for her.  I told her the truth, I had owned it for years.

I had seen this Funny or Die bit before, but I recently stumbled on it again.  Reminds me of Susan Boyle, but that was a real surprise.  We listened to Jewel quite a bit, and this whole Karaoke gag reminded me of those days.  We saw Jewel in concert, and she really can hit all those notes every time.  The Who song I played for her first was "Won't Get Fooled Again," that is good stuff too.  Funny, once my daughter didn't drive around with me anymore, I stopped listening to the collection of women singers.  Makes me wonder if I would still like them.

Often you do the right thing, the result is good, but no one knows what or why you are up to.  You just do it, knowing that the result might or might not be related to your acts.  You don't do it because you want to be thanked, but to make the world better.  Children make it so easy to do the right thing for their benefit, much harder to reach out to others in the same unselfish way.  Maybe, we should be trying harder to act unselfishly, for the greater good?





No comments: