Love Songs Redux

Saturday I had the rare opportunity to go shopping by myself. The shopping was productive and peaceful. While driving home and flipping through the satellite radio in the hubby's car, I landed on the Love Channel. Oh cheese, I know, but there are certain songs I can't pass by and (please don't judge my musical taste based on this one confession) Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do it For You" is one of them.

That song came out in 1991. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in high school. I was dating a senior. Oh, you can see where this is going. That song would play on the radio and I'd go all 15 year old girl soft in the gut as I wondered if he was thinking of me, too. *sigh*

Later, that senior would become the hubby.

So this song brings me back to that early, uncertain time of young love when everything is new and tummy flipping and smells good. Back before you fought over how he loaded the dishwasher or he saw you pumping or rushed you to the emergency room or watched your son get stitches on a Friday night.

Although, this past Saturday, when I heard this song, I thought of my boys. Since the birth of my two sons, love songs have taken on a different meaning. Not to say that I don't hear the romance of a certain song and that all of them apply to a mother/son relationship, but that unconditional, I will be here for you always, undying mushy stuff? Oh yeah, that's got my boys all over it.

The summer Peanut was born was the summer of Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars." Of course I watched Izzie and Denny's final moments play out to this song on "Grey's Anatomy" and reached for the tissues. And my cousin danced with her new husband to that song at their wedding reception underneath strings of light that twinkled like fireflies in the summer night. But that summer, I would hear that song and stop to rub my swollen belly, softly singing these words to my soon-to-be:

"All that I am

All that I ever was

Is here in your perfect eyes

They're all I can see

I don't know where

Confused about how as well

Just know that these things

Will never change for us at all"

This is where you all roll your eyes and realize that High Heeled Mama is truly a sap. A big old sappy sap. Guilty as charged.

So the other day, while driving home after a much needed couple of hours distance from the four year old power struggles and Pumpkin's demands for a level of independence beyond his 16 months, I whispered a wish for my boys:

"I would fight for you - I'd lie for you

Walk the wire for you - Ya, I'd die for you

You know it's true

Everything I do - I do it for you."

And before you all think that I've commandeered every love song for my children, take solace. The hubby and I still have "our" song. And there is nothing that can change that. And no, it's not Bryan Adams.

But it's just as sappy. Just like a good love song should be.