And not far, my love, from where we were before.

Last Friday, while I was listening to my iTunes on shuffle, a song came on that I hadn’t heard since I was a child. It was I Loved You Once in Silence from Camelot, sang by Julie Andrews and I don’t remember downloading it.

Unexpectedly, a wave of nostalgia washed over me and I started sobbing. These were not silent tears; these were levies being broken open by a storm surge of tears; guttural, animal-like sounds escaped my body; my eyes were throwing up tears. It was pain and catharsis. I haven’t cried like that in a long time.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to sing to me all the time. Like me, she was a performer, an actor, a dancer and a singer when she was young. She wanted to study theatre and acting, but her parents refused to support such a cause. My grandmother has told me she regrets not watering my mother’s talents. My mother’s singing repertoire was mostly show songs from the days of her youth; I Feel Pretty from West Side Story; My Favorite Things from Sound of Music; and I Loved Him Once in Silence from Camelot.

I loved you once in silence
And mis'ry was all I knew.
Trying so to keep my love from showing,
All the while not knowing you loved me too.
Yes, loved me in lonesome silence;
Your heart filled with dark despair.
Thinking love would flame in you forever,
And I'd never, never know the flame was there.
Then one day we cast away our secret longing;
The raging tide we held inside would hold no more.
The silence at last was broken!
We flung wide our prison door.
Ev'ry joyous word of love was spoken.

And now there's twice as much grief,
Twice the strain for us;
Twice the despair,
Twice the pain for us
As we had known before.

And after all had been said,
Here we are, my love,
Silent once more,
And not far, my love,
From where we were before.

The song from Camelot is beautiful and sad indeed. But that is not why I cried then--and cry now writing of it. It was homesickness that made me sob, the wistfulness of remembering those intimate moments with my mother singing during long night drives, the overwhelming warmth and comfort I’m so lucky to have had, the awareness that with age I travel farther and farther from that home in search of my own home, my own family and my own daughter to whom I’ll sing.

I very much look forward to that journey with Chris. But I love my mother so very much. Despite our low lows, I think of our relationship in terms of our high highs. She is a very good mother and I am lucky to have that. I cry tears of joy that I have and have always had such an amazing love in my life.