Of Bows, Headbands, and Snow Days

Every now and then, I'll make a mistake at work. I'll listen to Travellin' Soldier by the Dixie Chicks.

Here's a video of it.



And here are the lyrics

Two days past eighteen
He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He's a little shy so she gives him a smile
And he said would you mind sittin' down for a while
And talking to me,
I'm feeling a little low
She said I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go

So they went down and they sat on the pier
He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care
I got no one to send a letter to
Would you mind if I sent one back here to you

Chorus: I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter said
A soldier's coming home

So the letters came from an army camp
In California then Vietnam
And he told her of his heart
It might be love and all of the things he was so scared of
He said when it's getting kinda rough over here
I think of that day sittin' down at the pier
And I close my eyes and see your pretty smile
Don't worry but I won't be able to write for awhile

[Chorus]

One Friday night at a football game
The Lord's Prayer said and the Anthem sang
A man said folks would you bow your heads
For a list of local Vietnam dead
Crying all alone under the stands
Was a piccolo player in the marching band
And one name read and nobody really cared
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair

[Chorus]

The reason this is a mistake is that there is not once that I've listened to this song and not cried. I think it's a combination of many things. The general sadness of the song, the unfulfilled love, the wasted life, and the vision of it from the eyes of the pretty little girl with a bow in her hair. You see, every time I listen to that song, that little girl is Kinsey and that little girl has grown up and is experiencing sadness because of getting her heart broken and I want hold that off as long as I possibly can. And I know I can't and I know it's coming. Here's how I know.

For the first 5 and a half years of her life, Kinsey wore bows in her hair all the time.





















But somewhere in the last couple of months, she changed over to headbands.





















It was one of those things that was almost imperceptible until I looked back on it. I don't know why she's chosen to wear her hair like this now. I don't think she got teased about it at school or anything else, but now she's not the pretty little girl with the bow in her hair. She's starting to grow up and I get these glimpses of the woman that she's going to become, and even that makes me sad sometimes too. I love that little girl so fiercely sometimes that I feel like my heart is going to explode and I know that I don't have the words to properly express that to her. So we play and we read books and she helps me set up at church and put together furniture. And I hope that her memories will include those times and that they will express to her what words can never truly get across.

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In other news, Connor is pretty much crawling now. We'll have some video of that later, but here are some pictures of Kinsey playing in the snow on Friday.

























































































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One final thing, if you view this blog through a reader like bloglines or Google Reader, I apologize for all the new posts you get that aren't really new posts. I'm going back and adding some titles and labels to some old posts (like the England trip ones) and that's doing it, I'll hopefully be done with that at some points, but until then you'll being seeing links to old posts, that of course, you're welcome to read if you want.