Five Days In May

The other morning on the ride in to work, Blue Rodeo’s “Five Days In May” was playing. In that special off-key sort of way that I have, I couldn’t help but sing along to it.

It’s a pertinent song for me because it was always on the radio in Ottawa at about the time that Francine and I first started dating. We’d been friends for about a year or so after meeting as teachers at an academic summer camp at Carleton University, but had always each been dating other people, until that fateful spring when both of us were single at the same time and things just fell into place. Like the song says . . .

To find the face you’ve seen a thousand times

A few years ago, for our anniversary, Fran had a friend at work, Donna, help her put together a CD of our songs, complete with a beautifully designed cover. It included this Blue Rodeo song which, although we hadn’t spoken about it for years, we’d both always felt a tie to this song. (Like one of Elaine’s nutty boyfriends on that classic Seinfeld episode, it was our own personal song, our “Desperato”) The CD also included the song we used for our “first dance” as a married couple. Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” (It's funny, when I was young I’d always thought that I’d want my wife and I to dance to Rush’s “In The End”) as well as some other songs that had special meaning to us.

Fran does these kinds of cool things all of the time. And she does a million little things every day that make me just feel good. Like when she smiles at me. She's thoughtful and kind and has a wonderful sense of humour (and oh yes, a cute bum). And on top of the fun we always have together, she humours all of the silly and crazy things that flow out of me constantly. It can’t be easy for her putting up with my childish jokes, the way I regularly take funny things one step too far in terms of good taste, my pack-rat tendencies, never mind my bizarre desire to squirrel myself away in the basement den for hours at a time and pound out nasty little horror stories.

Man, I’m one lucky son of a gun to have Fran in my life. Not sure what it is that I did right, but someone up there must like me.