Sharing Emotions on Sunday…What Do You Fear?

Do You Fear the Wind?
By Hamlin Garland

DO you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheek will tan,
You ’ll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you ’ll walk like a man!

I pulled most of this blog together last night but it didn’t seem complete. I knew I wanted to stir up some of my emotions, share them with you. But I wasn’t sure why. Until I hunted up a poem that has stuck with me since high school. And found a  particular favorite song of ours about a love as timeless as possible these days.

I knew this song had a foundation in truth, and this You Tube version tells the whole story. Kathy Mattea’s husband wrote the song about his grandparents, and shared it with Kathy before they were engaged. In the write up, she reveals: “When Jon told me the story for the first time, it was before we had even gotten engaged, and he just cried and cried. When he played the song for me and the first chorus came around, I knew where he was going with the lyric, and I just couldn’t believe he could be that vulnerable as a writer, to put that moment in a song.”

As writers we need to be vulnerable, to put all our love and memories and fear out there, if we want to be honest with our readers, and with ourselves.

I think I’ll be sharing the Streisand indulgences next Sunday.