Tag Archives: Love

I do.

Posted by Mark McDonough on

Remember your first few days of college?  I do.  I was a freshman at UC San Diego.  I was entirely too cocky, and fairly sure that all the movies I’d seen about college were true.  And then she walked into my dorm room, said hello, and walked out.  I married her six years later.  The rest is… meant to be, confusing, fulfilling, frustrating, gratifying, reassuring, happy, sad, misunderstood, scary, incredible, indescribable, crazy, exciting, anxious, angry, painful, beautiful, sleepless, everlasting, unsure, wonderful, heart wrenching, heart pounding, heart felt,…

Is it possible to feel all of that at once when you look at someone?  The truth is… I do.

Open Letter to the Man Upstairs

Posted by Mark McDonough on

Dear God,

Thank you for 80’s movies and Pop Rocks.  Thank you for the nineties so we could all un-peg our pants.  Thank you for Mr. Pibb and his courage to be satisfied with a masters degree.  Thank you for mullets because we like to laugh at pictures of ourselves posted on Facebook.  Thank you for Facebook.  Mark McDonough likes this.  Thank you for love songs like Tesla’s Love Song cuz darlin’ we’ll find love again, I know.  Thank you for peanut butter and the dogs that get it stuck in their teeth.  Thank you for Hermione Granger because she’s the one that figured everything out in every Harry Potter book.  Thank you for quiet moments interrupted by SBD’s because really they’re funnier than the unexpected loud ones, though maybe not as much as the ones that want to be SBD’s but get too excited at the very end and make that little put put sound.  Thank you for chocolate bars melted in diapers at baby showers.  That’s just weird and gross and hilarious all at the same time.  Thank you for friends who’ve got your back, every time… even when you’ve been bitten by a rattlesnake on the ass and you need the poison sucked out.  Thank you for cozy socks.  Not because I wear them but because seeing my wife wear them makes me feel… well… cozier.  Thanks for Mona Lisa’s smile.  I think she’s smiling about the SBD she just let slip and everyone is about to catch wind of.  Thank you for wind and not being able to see it, but to see its effects… kinda like you…  Thanks for clearing up misunderstandings so that no mother is ever murdered by her child because said child is told by papa to go aks mama.  Thank you for Lucky Charms.  They truly are magically delicious, like when a mother takes a bite of strained peas and says to her infant child, “seee?  mmmmm!  yummy.”  Thank you for do overs.  You know how much we need them.  Thanks for laughter.  Thanks for second chances.  And thirds.  And um fourths.  Thanks for unconditionally loving me.  Thanks for being patient and kind and never failing me.  The truth is, I could learn a lot from you.

Much love,

Mark

Words and Music:

Posted by Mark McDonough on

Words and Music: A Little’s Enough.

Words and music… they go together.  They need each other.  That’s what Eddie (Michael Parre) told Word Man (Tom Berenger) in the movie Eddie and the Cruisers.  Perhaps they do go together… like driving in the car and singing out loud.  You know you do it.  The question is with what words and what music?  And yes, I’ve had Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” blasting in the car.  I’m man enough to admit it.  And when it happened just that one time on that totally random day (I swear) … I owned it baby.
But today it was Temple of the Dog and I was on a Hunger Strike.  Oh yes.  And I sounded good.  Eddie Vedder good, and I don’t care what the carload next to me thought when I turned and saw them laughing during my Chris Cornell Falsetto… I looked them in the eyes and belted it out! “I’m going Hungryaaheeeyyyyyeeeahhhh!”  Ok, maybe I’ll stick to the lower register from now on.  But really it doesn’t matter how I sound, because in the car with the radio up, I always sound good.  And so do you.  And it’s in those moments that the lyrics have a tendency to sneak up on us and we suddenly hear them in a new way that is unexpected and it changes our perspective on the day, or on a person, a friend, a spouse, a child.  Yeah.   It’s happened to you.  And today it happened to me too.

The Band: Angels and Airwaves.
The Song, “A Little’s Enough.”
The Lyrics: Sorry, I have to say it but you look like you’re sad, Your smile is gone; I noticed it bad, the cure is if you let in just a little more love, I promise you this; A little’s Enough

You see, the truth is, you’re gonna be in your car riding solo soon enough.  And you’ll find a song that makes you think of someone or something that matters (because words and music do that), and when you do, you can keep the song and the emotion to yourself by locking it back up in the car or you can take it with you when you get out and remember that it’s not that much of a stretch to go from keeping it with you to sharing it.  It’s just a question of who you share it with.  And well, if you do share it, I promise you this, a little’s enough…