Sea of No Cares

Caroline and I had a really amazing chat this afternoon online. Over the course of it, I sent her the lyrics to one of my favorite Great Big Sea songs. Those of you with Ipods or whatever really should invest the 99 cents for this one. It is called Sea of No Cares, and it is a happy song:

When you're in love, there's no time and no space
There's a permanent smile on your face
Your friends all complain that you're going insane
But the truth is they're just afraid

[Chorus]
Hey somewhere,
you threw your fear in the Sea of No Cares
Hey somewhere,
you threw your fear in the Sea of No Cares


When you decide that what counts is inside
Your friends all say it's a lie
But there's no brighter light than the look in her eyes
When you're walking her home through the night

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Let your self go with the tide
There's an angel by your side
Tonight

Back at the bar getting cynically stoned
Your friends are drinking alone
But it's funny, they don't even cross your mind
When she asks you into her home


I think that the first time we each ventured into this crazy business called dating after our spouses died, we wanted to have so much control over outcomes. We wanted, frankly, our old lives back. And as we realized we couldn't have them back, we grabbed and grabbed and grabbed, and it was less and less successful.

Caroline use the word softness to describe herself. I have always been a big ole teddy bear, so I don't know how much softer I am now than ever, but maybe it fits. But I am certainly in a place where I don't have to have the control I wanted. Life is not something to be planned, but something to be experienced. Somewhere we took that desire for control and we threw it into the sea of no cares. I can see in retrospect that if there is a moment that happened for me, it was in early-mid July. The reason this song speaks to me so much of that is that we don't even need to know when it happened, but we know that somewhere along the line it did.

I would like to think of this much more, but I am tired and we are headed to Austin tomorrow. Woo-hoo.