The other day I was minding my own business, and I was reminded of a song from my college years. I came across a video of the performance of the song “Hook” by Blues Traveler. It had been a long time since I heard the song, but it was a gift to hear it with new ears.
John Popper made that harmonica do things I didn’t think harmonicas could do.
I always liked that song, but I remember souring on Blues Traveler pretty hard because, for a time in the nineties, every speaker in every store and every corner of the world was playing one of their songs.
It turns out that songs are a lot like relationships: familiarity breeds contempt.
What starts as a catchy tune you can get enough of becomes a tired chorus that torments you wherever you go.
In a relationship, there are all these little things the other person does that you fall in love with. In the beginning, they are cute, like the way he sips from a straw or the way she says “Crackle Barrel” instead of “Cracker Barrel.”
Given enough time, it’s not unusual for those very same things to grate on you, creating an ever-widening divide that makes you wonder how in the world you ever fell in love with this person in the first place.
Too often, we let the things about a loved one that drive us crazy drive us apart.
And yet, every time I hear that an acquaintance has lost a spouse, or I see a tragedy on the news and hear the stories from family members left behind, it’s an opportunity to see my relationships with new eyes.
Familiarity may breed contempt, but contempt has a way of vanishing when a loved one is taken from us unexpectedly.
I hope I die before my wife. But if Kim goes before me, and I live to be an old man, I know there will be many times when I’ll be sitting in my rocking chair and something will pop up in a conversation or on TV that will remind me of her. And there’s a good chance it will be something I once cursed, something that drove me crazy, something I grew tired of encountering, like a Blues Traveler song.
It turns out the things that annoy you most about a loved one may be the things you miss most about them when they’re gone.
Like the way she says “Crackle Barrel” instead of “Cracker Barrel.”
Leave a Reply