There is a slight possibility of high hormone levels

My kids love Johnny Cash. What can I say? They have good taste.

One day, while we were out gallivanting around (probably heading to or from Target), Cooper put in a song request.

"Mom, can you play the Firing song?"
"The what? What Firing song?"
"You know. The song with the fire ring!"
"The fire ring? Wha? Ohhhh, Ring of Fire? You want to hear Ring of Fire?"
"Yeah! Ring of Fire! Play Ring of Fire!"

So it began, their love affair with the Man in Black and his short but sweet songs about people whose lives go to hell in a handbasket, fast.

This morning both of my kids woke up ill. Griffin's eyes were glued shut and green goop was oozing out of his nose. Cooper's ears hurt and he had this persistent cough for the last few weeks. So we made the executive decision to leave Griffin home with dad and for me to take Cooper to the pediatrician.

On the way there, I got a request for the Fire Ring song again. Really, it's the perfect song for toddlers, what with it's talk about love being a burning flame and all. Kinda makes those kids from Kings of Leon look like idiots for trying to re-write a classic and say it was about venereal disease to throw everyone off. Oh, except the part where those clean-cut kids from the south didn't actually write any of their own music, they have this producer who 'found' them, much like the Jonas Brothers were 'found' and there are other questionable parts to their story, but I digress.

It's short, and right after that song is a real pick-me-upper song called The Ballad of Ira Hayes. About a Pima Indian who lost his farmland and then went to war as a Marine, surviving Iwo Jima to plant the American Flag on Japanese soil. Or something like that, I wasn't a history major.

So maybe, just maybe I am a little bit hormonal right now. Or maybe all the crackadoo BS of the last week (another boss fired abruptly on Tuesday) has gotten to me. Because we're motoring down the road, enjoying the tunes and the time together and I'm boo-hooing in the front seat over the poor guy, Ira Hayes.

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

And when the fight was over
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes

Ira returned a hero
Celebrated through the land
He was wined and speeched and honored; Everybody shook his hand

But he was just a Pima Indian
No water, no crops, no chance
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
And when did the Indians dance

I mean, have you ever heard anything more sad? Poor Ira. What's even sadder is how he became an alcoholic and Johnny Cash wrote a song about him and calls him drunken Ira Hayes all the time.

Hang on, I will stop weeping soon.

Usually when life starts weighing heavy and my shoulders hurt from carrying it around, I tell myself this too shall pass. This is especially helpful when my kids are being jerks or my husband is, or I am, or life is. Then today, Chris wrote this on Notes from the Trenches: This too shall pass. I say that a lot. It is supposed to be a comfort. A reassurance that things will not always be the way they are right now. But along with the challenging stuff, so passes the good.

And oh my God, she's right. The bad stuff almost always moves on, but these times when my kids are little and want to listen to Johnny Cash in the car with me, they'll move on too. There will come a day when they're sick and away at college and I can't keep them home from school with me, I can't give them Tylenol and rub their backs, and even if I could they wouldn't want me to.

I know, I promised the weeping would stop. I'm sure it will. Like all things, it'll pass.

- H