Sweet Honey in the Rock: On Children

Now that my kids are older (8, 10, 12, 14), their senses of humor are more nuanced than they were just a few years ago. It's fun to witness, for instance, when songs that they earnestly loved as younger children become re-purposed as fodder for comedy. 


I believe it all started with the Barney "I love you, you love me" song. (Don't click on that link.  Really.) 


After heroically suffering through the torment of watching Barney videos with my kids -- keeping a pleasant look on my face when they beamed at me, and trying hard not to notice how traumatized and false the child actors appeared to be as they danced around with those wide, frozen smiles -- mercifully my kids grew up and different videos were shoved up onto the library checkout counter.


(Oh I shouldn't be so hard on Barney, right? The messages are positive: Help others. Love your family. Share.)


Not long after my oldest declared that Barney was "for babies," he came home from school singing a version of Barney's song that replaced the word "love" with "shoot." 


"I shoot you, you shoot me..."


Ah. American culture at its finest.


Meanwhile, we had "Peace is the World Smiling" on the kitchen CD player and crooning to us in the car. It remains one of my favorite collections for children. Taj Mahal. Pete Seeger.  Harry Belafonte. (I mean.) But now even its title track is re-interpreted around here. 


Sometimes when I'm driving and someone pulls jaggedly out in front of me, I shout out "peace is the world smiling" (alluding to Seinfeld's "Serenity Now" for my husband's benefit). Or if one of my kids knocks over a glass of milk or a lamp or somehow drops a gallon of orange juice straight to the floor, my 14 year-old might say, sanctimoniously, "Peace is the world smiling, Mom."


All to say, I highly recommend this collection to parents of young children. One track I've never tired of and which, so far, hasn't found itself being mocked by the tweens and teens around here is Sweet Honey in the Rock's performance of "On Children."  Their vocals are exquisite and the lyrics never fail to calm me and to remind me of who I am -- and who I am not -- as my children's mother.


Enjoy!

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you, 

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you...

                                                     (Kahil Gibran)