Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear View Mirror." This was not something he did lightly, hes a teenager who was planning on spending the morning playing football with his buddies and then the afternoon with his guitar or napping, but the rain started in and that killed his plans and he watched me struggle along with Windows Movie maker, cursing and squinting through my inadequate glasses, getting more and more frustrated til finally with his trademark," Nick Burns-Your Companies Computer Guy" snarl he said,"MOVE!" and he took over.
He got all the pictures in place, found a picture to fill a gap we knew we couldn't fill otherwise and he then captioned and set up all the animations and fancy stuff that was making me crazy because half of it I cannot see properly and the other half I get frustrated with trying to get match what I have in my mind. He got all the pictures and text in place and it was beautiful, exactly what I wanted and then we hit our first major argument of the day; the music.
He knew what I listened to when I wrote that story, he was sitting next to me on the couch most of the time as I sat there with my ear buds in,alternately either smiling at memories or crying over them and he listened to my stories and some of the music with me, and he knew the one song that inspired me along with the one voice that was in my ears most of the time. When I got up to go referee a fight between my daughter and Stubby over who was farting in the bedroom the worst, he loaded the song and when I came back he had it perfectly synced up and playing along with the pictures.
My reaction was visceral and he didn't know how to handle a mom in tears over a simple song, but he stopped it and asked me why I wouldn't allow him to leave it. I explained that it was most likely tangled up in legal issues that would take years to sort out,and that I was not going to step into the middle of with my paltry little video. I wanted him to record HIS music and he finally agreed after much negotiation and explaining that no matter how special a song may be, sometimes a song from someone close to you is even more special.
He sat and tuned and re-tuned his guitar for at least an hour, driving me up the wall, and he strummed and picked and wool-gathered like musicians do, and he played the one song he had written over a week ago and decided he didn't like it for the video, so he came up with something new.
We recorded it at my kitchen table when we caught a lull in the barking and scratching of the dog, the bickering of the other kids and the noise of the road outside. You can hear a bit of the creak of our chairs and some of the tap of his toes on the tile, but I think it adds to the simple charm of the melody.
He did that for me. He gave up his whole day, working on my video and helping me out when I know he wanted to be off hanging out with his friends, and he wrote a song for me. We may battle like most parents and teens do, but today I feel loved more than a little.