A Love Story

I was seven years old when we moved from southern California to Alexandria, Virginia, where I started second grade at Samuel W. Tucker Elementary. A school just ten miles outside of Washington D.C. so we had all types of ethnicity represented.

Anyway, one day I was riding the bus home and the bus driver was playing the radio quite softly in the background of elementary-aged school kids laughing, yelling, arguing, and making weird noises.

Until this one song came on. As soon as this song came on everyone on the bus started to cheer and ask the bus driver to turn it up. He proceeded to turn up the volume to what seemed like the max. I had never heard this song. The coasts of the US are so different, especially in musical tastes.

The song started out with an amazing acapella from the artist followed by slow piano. About thirty seconds into the song, the artist hits the bass notes of the piano, the drums start to kick in, and the rhythm moves up a tempo.

Apparently, everyone not only knew this song but they also knew the lyrics to it. When the artist started to sing- she had an incredible voice- most of the kids on the bus started as well. The song was contemporary soul mixed with a rhythm and blues vibe. I liked it.

Not only did I like the song, but I loved that all these kids that I was just getting to know were adding their voices to it. As I look back, it created such a uniting feeling in the air. There was something in this song that was hitting the essence of a deep human desire. Of course, I had no clue that was what was happening at the time, but I felt it.

The song continued on. I couldn’t really understand the lyrics because there were about 30 kids between the ages of six to ten singing their hearts out. All with different pitches and tunes, as you could imagine with a bunch of children singing.

The chorus came with an eruption of emotion and even more kids added their voices to the mix. I was in love with this song now. ¨Who is this artist and how have I never heard this song?¨ I questioned as I listened with spontaneous joy in my heart.

I was so moved by this moment and didn’t know why. I needed to find out who this artist was but there was no way I was asking my newly made friends in the chance of revealing that I was out of the loop. I’m pretty sure I just sang along to act like I knew the song. It was easy to do so given the other thirty or so voices screaming the lyrics at once. It’s so funny how intelligent we are socially and what coping mechanisms arise, even at such a young age. To belong is everything.

After the song ended I kept singing it in my head so I could remember the lyrics. At least, the lyrics I heard, which were for sure wrong. My parents were waiting for me at the bus stop and once I got off the bus I told them ¨I need to find this song!¨ I remember them being enthused about my inquisition and asking ¨do you know who sings it?¨ ¨No, I don’t. But I know the lyrics.¨ I repeated back very sure of myself.

I continued to sing them the chorus that I heard. ¨I keeeeep on fallin’… in an ow… Love… (something… something…mumble) You.¨ That was all I could decipher from the children's karaoke session on the bus.

Now, remember this was 2001. We had dial-up internet. This was way before shazam, youtube, and even finding lyrics online. I believe we did some searching online through the top songs lists but to no avail. So one could imagine my parents’ humor thinking that they would now have to take their seven-year-old to the record store and have him give his rendition to the salesman- which of course I thought was on point, but they knew was way off the mark.

This was serious business though and I was committed to finding out. I remember my grandma was visiting at the time and all of them just got a kick out of me singing my new favorite song. Nevertheless, bless my parents, they took me to the record store at the nearest mall.

They did their job. Now it was my turn to sing the tune to the employee and give him the test of his life on whether or not he knew his music. I mean, this man had to be the sherlock holmes of music to put the pieces of my broken chorus together. But somehow he did, it worked.

I walked out of that music store with a compact disc copy of Songs in A Minor and the knowledge that my new favorite song- maybe you have the same supernatural musical ear as the man at the store and already guessed it- was ¨Fallin’¨ by Alicia Keys (for the full experience, listen in the background while you read the rest of this).

I continued to play the song over and over on my walkman for weeks. I had no idea that this song was about love. I don’t even think I ever learned the real lyrics back then, I just kept singing my version.

Fast forward 20 years. I was sitting in nature the other day as ¨Fallin’¨ came into my head out of nowhere. I haven’t heard it for at least several years, but as it was playing in my head I was transported to the scene on the bus back in Alexandria, Virginia. And like a key sliding perfectly into its lock, something opened in me.

I realized that the reason I loved this song so much back then was the passion Alicia Keys (and the students on the bus) sang with. I was able to see how it displayed the quintessential human desire to feel love. ¨I never loved someone, the way that I… love you.¨ I realized that my seven-year-old self, in some way, wanted to touch that love. It was a new potential that I became aware of.

Moreover, I registered that I have now attained the love demonstrated to me through this song. It felt like the past and future collapsed into that moment. Where the love that I now feel for my partner was something I got a taste of when I was seven, as an unconscious seed.

I was overwhelmed with the kind of joy you get when you see something so clearly. As I sat there and cried acknowledging this love I have found with my partner (or has it found me?), I just thought about how beautiful life is. That we may have some kind of intuition or opening we cling to for a seemingly odd reason, but in holding onto it we walk into a future that we know is possible.

There was something transmitted to me through ¨Fallin’¨ that was beyond knowing at the time. But like a seed dropped into the earth, the tree grew up until this moment where it bore the fruits of realization.

The other thing I love about this is Alica is not singing about how she fell in love with someone. She’s talking about the process of love and how it’s not always perfect. ¨Sometimes I love ya, sometimes you make me blue.¨ It’s not romanticized. But in the end, she’s never felt love like this before.

I can resonate. It won’t always be easy. It won’t always flow. There are still barriers in my heart to love. And likely hers, too. But it’s our process and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It means the world for me to be able to walk with someone who is willing to commit to all the pitfalls that relationships bring. To be with a woman who is so open to getting to know me, moment by moment. Someone who allows me to make my mistakes and is there to support me through the challenges that come with such. To have a level of safety that allows the most vulnerable, hidden, pieces of each of us to arise and be loved- the ultimate intimacy. To learn and grow together. To explore new places within and without.

I am eternally grateful each day to whatever force brought us together. I believe this to be the same force behind my ¨need to know that song!¨ It has been with me since the beginning and is continuously walking me in its unknowable direction. In the words of another beautiful Alicia Keys love song ¨some people want it all, but I don’t want nothing at all… If it ain’t you, baby… If I ain’t got you, baby.¨

So, you never know when a seed will ripen. It’s hard to even tell what’s potentially a seed in the first place- I never would have thought ¨Fallin’¨ was one for me- so better to let life take care of it and be happily surprised when you arrive somewhere that you unconsciously knew you were headed.

In other words, may we all trust in the process. May we not be pressured to have things figured out, but have the courage to take it step by step making ourselves available to love with each pace. Then, we can really enjoy where we are and not attempt to get somewhere else. And then, dare I say, we can actually love.

Blessings on your journey to the Love that has no concept.