I’ve been a big fan of Brandi Carlile for a long time. In fact, one of the very first posts on this very blog, all the way back in the spring of 2006, was an enthusiastic endorsement of her debut album. But over all these years, I’m not sure she’s written another song as beautiful as this one. Certainly none as likely to bring a tear to your eye. It’s a love letter to her daughter, one framed by a bracingly honest assessment of what it actually means to become a parent. And this is critical. By dwelling on the difficulties–the terror of knowing that you are now utterly responsible for someone else, the need to organize your life around someone else’s whims, the jealousy of seeing your friends still out enjoying all their free time–Carlile brings home just how powerful the experience really is.
It’s not simply that all those things are worth sacrificing for the sake of her daughter. It’s that having Evangeline in her life helps her to understand that every path comes with loss, that every choice carries the weight of all the roads not taken. But this choice has brought something precious into the world, whose simple presence is able to transform those feelings of loss into something very different. To give them purpose.
The result is a song that’s almost framed as an internal argument–a reminder that it’s okay to sometimes feel the weight as a burden, so long as you also keep in mind the new possibilities that it creates. As she sings:
And they’ve still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time
And they still enjoy their evenings with the skeptics and the wine
Oh, but all the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time
From inside of the ages through your eyes
And every time I hear it, my heart fills up so much that it feels ready to burst.