MUSIC|PARENTING

It’s Gonna take a Lotta Love (to get us Thru the Night)

Lullabies in minor keys: hushing daddy/daughter hurricanes with Neil Young

Music is life. Baby Clara and I jamming. Photo by the author’s wife, Krista.

I’ve been singing Clara to sleep since before there was a Clara.

And always with Neil Young.

The nameless, genderless “belly-bump” that would eventually grow into my 10-year-old, not-so-little girl won’t remember, but she would have heard me soothing her in-utero kicks and tantrums with Neil Young’s “Comes a Time” or “Sugar Mountain.”

I don’t talk about it much, though I probably should, but there were other children — siblings to Clara that were never blessed to see the sun — who were soothed by the lyrics of Uncle Neil as well. Same belly, different babies. Couplets never destined to be songs.

There are lyrics from those faraway times that left exit wounds on my heart. My breath still sometimes catches as the words escape into the present nighttime bedroom of my lucky one. My love.

Why Neil Young?

Practicality, mostly.

I mean, most of his music doesn’t exactly lend itself to infant/toddler/childhood/tween sleepy-sleepy dreamtime bliss… unless you’re as dark and mournful as Clara’s dad. Or Clara…