Achy Breaky Heart

I've shared only one story so far, in which music had a part, a funny thing, because music really played a starring role in our life with Emma.

I'm not a musician by any means, but there was something about having kids that made me want to sing. Especially when they were little, I went through my days with them using the events and conversation of the day as lyrics and setting it to whatever tune I'd heard on the radio or the cassette we'd been listening to. As the girls got older, this became a little more embarrassing to them and I tried to restrict my performances to our home. Emma especially loved when I sang in my pseudo-opera voice. I could tell by the way she rolled her eyes and held her head.

When she was little, however, she genuinely liked these songs. Here's a story I told at her memorial service of one the first songs I created for her:

The summer Emma was born, believe it or not, the song that was topping the charts was Achy Breaky Heart by Bill Ray Cyrus, now known to most as Miley's dad. The song was on the radio constantly, so I guess it was inevitable that it made its way into our daily routine. To keep Emma still while I was changing her I would sing “Don’t be slow, so very, very slow, changing my diapers and my clothes. Cause when you are so slow, so very, very, slow, it makes me very angry don’t you know.” Surprisingly, it worked.