Last words

For just over five years now, I've been writing about music and fatherhood. Since explaining, on a May day, how the two were linked, in my mind, I've turned the subject over, and over - and have also had the happy chance to see the two nominal protagonists interact, repeatedly, and delightedly (see above). But now, with the grandparents driving north, and Cleo a full five, it's time to put the laptop away, and simply live, and love, without such mediation.

It's tempting, you know, to try to close with a momentous final line. Something like "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle," say, or "and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." But I'm no Joyce, or Dante (or, as Dante says, Aeneas, or Paul). And so I think that I'll end, instead, by doing what L. and I do for Cleo at the end of pretty much every day: reading from a children's book. And on this fine afternoon, I have a 1981 book by George Selden in mind:

So we're in the middle of the book, and Chester has just started chirping, out of a sheer pleasure in feeling the earth beneath him. And we read:

"The song went on for several minutes. It was slow, then fast; then low, and then high. Like a thread of bright silk, it ran through the darkness. And then it ended. Chester never knew why a song ended. He could feel the end coming - and the music was over."