Songs For Your Mother Gordon MacMillan (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📖

I head to my bedroom and drop myself down on the mattress. After a minute or so, I sit up and pick up my guitar. I’ve been writing down lyrics, some just a verse and others more fully formed ever since I got back and putting them down in that A4 pad, in ‘Songs for Lauren’. Most are still a work in progress, and I like to sit and play with bits of them, usually towards the end of the day or when procrastinating about a deadline.

I start to run my fingers over the strings, trying to work out what I will play, and then I know the song. It’s one of the ones I am still working on, and I know it’s not finished yet.

I thought I could meet her in a bookshop coffee bar,

In a rundown side street on the far side of town.

She said I’ll see you at a quarter past ten,

I think I was still on the train just then,

I’ve been looking, I’ve been looking for you

No matter how hard I try, can’t touch the sky

I’ve been looking, I’ve been looking for you

Chapter 13

When I wake early the next morning, I don’t open my eyes right away. I lie there, my mind still muddy from sleep, like those moments when remembered dreams slip quickly away. That’s what yesterday feels like, and I wonder if it could have possibly happened.

It can’t have – except it did. I review the day’s events in my head like a home movie. I run it from the moment that I was lying here with Rachel and the buzzer to the front door sounded, and I walked downstairs and opened the door and my world changed.

At that moment, it was as if I crossed a threshold and was transported without moving, and I’m still travelling now, flying furiously forward as I lie in bed on a Sunday morning worrying about my unexpected induction to the world of fatherhood.

I pick up Lauren’s notes and start to read. She has written a section on family. One of the things that she was excited about for Luke was that he will have a grandmother and an auntie and all those bits of family and the social extensions they bring, which Luke has not had until now. She wrote, ‘Grandchildren make all the difference, like children do,’ and Lauren only had her friends like Josie and others to help her, and family is different. There were times when she needed more help when Josie was away, and it wasn’t available. There wasn’t a support bubble, and that had to suck. If you have it, then it’s something you take for granted, and I am so glad that my mother will be arriving this morning. It feels like the cavalry is on the way.

I can look back at when my grandmother was around and remember what it was like to have someone like that in my life. Some days, it is magical. It’s like having the person who gets to be your mother without ever having to tell you off or tell you that what you’re doing is wrong. Or, if they do, they manage it in such a soft way that you don’t mind and I don’t know how that works. She’s the person who brings the presents, brings the chocolate, and tells you that you are quite the most special child that ever walked the earth.

I’m still reading Lauren’s notes when Luke walks into the bedroom. He lingers in the doorway, pausing on his own threshold, until I ask him to come on in. He takes a few uncertain steps into the room, and doesn’t come any closer until he sheepishly asks if he can jump on the bed.

‘Yes, you can,’ I say.

With a leap, Luke launches himself and bounces on the bed with a look of glee on his face, and he continues to jump until coming to rest.

I ask him how he slept. Luke shrugs without saying anything more. I’d been half-expecting Luke to be knocking on my door in the middle of the night. It never happened. After I put him to bed, I didn’t hear a thing from him. I checked on him before I turned out my light, and he was soundly sleeping and snuffling away. He must have been exhausted after yesterday’s travelling. I know I was, and I was awake for hours after Luke went to bed. My mind was racing after the day’s events, and it’s still racing now.

‘What are you reading?’ Luke asks.

‘I’m reading something from Mommy,’ I say.

‘What does she say?’

‘Well, she says that’s she’s glad that you have a grandmother and an Auntie Dani. I suppose a grandad as well,’ I say.

‘Who is my grandmother?’ Luke asks.

‘She’s my mum, which makes her your grandmother, and you’ll get to meet her later,’ I say.

Luke nods at this, before moving swiftly on to the business at hand.

‘I’m hungry,’ he says.

‘Yeah, so am I, come on,’ I say. ‘I’ll make some breakfast.’

We go through to the kitchen, and I put the radio on and the kettle too and Big Star’s song Thirteen is playing on the 6 Music morning show. I love this song, and can’t remember the last time I heard it. As I’m listening I start to sing along softly to myself about walking home from school, and then Luke is singing the words too. I stop, and I watch him, he’s smiling, and he looks so happy.

‘You know this song?’ I ask.

‘Mommy likes it, she plays it on her guitar,’ he says. ‘I like it too.’

‘So do I, it’s a beautiful song,’ I say, and he continues to hum and half sing the words. He comes to life at the few lines that he can remember, and I help him out with the rest. We’re both singing, and I start doing this sway dance from side to side that makes Luke laugh as we continue to sing.

I pour