Time After Time

This post's title is one of the few songs my mother and I both loved when I was a teenager. It's a sweet song about loving someone you can't always connect with while always holding them in your heart . She was born in 1932 and had me in 1965. It's rare for a girl who came of age in the 40's and lived most of her life as a Republican to share an affinity for a song with one who did the same in the 80's and lived her life as a Liberal. As much as you may love someone, it can be difficult to connect because of your differences. But occasionally something as simple as a song can connect people and Ms. Lauper's best song was one that bridged that divide for my mom and I.

My mother and I shared looks I've always been told. We also shared a 'social butterfly' tendency, loud laugh, loud mouth, a twinge of the stereotypical Irish temper and equally stereotypical Irish love of adult beverages. Oh yeah...also red hair; though it's been years since either of us had the real thing. But until recent years, one thing we had never shared was the same politics.

As a Clash-loving rebellious teen I never had any luck convincing my conservative mom that Reagan was a dangerous human hating feeb. As a Green Day-loving liberal grown woman, it was not hard to convince my conservative mom that George Bush was/is what I thought Reagan was...times a thousand. She regretted her 2000 vote for Bush a million times more than she regretted her vote for Nixon decades earlier. My mom voted for Kerry in 2004, registered as a Democrat for the first time in her life in 2006 and voted a straight D ticket.

She would say often in our conversations leading up to the November elections that a part of her was glad she wasn't going to be around for what she thought could be in store for our nation and the world. I knew she didn't mean...'Sucks to be you'...but instead it was her way of asking me 'what are you going to do about it?'. It reminded me of my childhood when she'd say to me after dinner (my daily chore was doing the dishes)...'the dishes don't clear themselves from the table, wash themselves and magically appear in the cupboards' then I'd reply 'No duh Mooooom!' and wash, dry, then put away those uncooperative dishes. So I assured my mom I was doing my part and so were many many people I know, to clean our nation up with as little breakage as possible.

Last week I got to say goodbye to her in person. I tried to tell her everything I needed to and thank her for everything she'd done for me, but choked. When I got back in town, I e-mailed my dad with a list of things I forgot to say to her and he read them to her for me. Among many: I thanked her for getting my dad to let me date, for not taking my car privileges away even though I got into an accident the first time I took it out, for teaching me to stand up for what I believed in, for arguing with me, and for voting the way she did in November.

Last night when I learned she was gone, a flurry of new things I wanted to tell her but would never get to, entered my mind. Then it occurred to me...what I needed was a song.


"if you're lost you can look--and you will find me
time after time
if you fall I will catch you--I'll be waiting
time after time "