Brittney Sawitzki Song Book Movie Piece My mother and I have never had the strongest bond but we manage to push through no matter what. My mother always used to tell me things I never understood as a child. Normally when a mother goes on a tangent about how in “her days” things were different, and so were the attitudes of children, they usually don't break out into a song and dance to get across their point. There wasn't any particular thing that I would do that would trigger this one song, but when it started it never stopped. My mother would go on for hours humming, singing, chanting, and replaying every line of the song she could remember in her current state of anger. Most of the time the reason why she would start singing the song was because my little sister and I would always gang up on her to get away with something, or really anything. We'd try to get an extra cookie, or convince dad to take us to the park even though we both knew that our mother had already made it clear that the park was not an option. My mother would start, “Now I know you both know that I told you guys that this wasn't okay, didn't I? Did I not make things clear enough?” That was the golden line “Did I not make things clear enough?” Then she certainly made things clear enough. My mother would say “Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.” I still don't know to this day if she understands that waterfalls, rivers, and lakes weren't scary. Actually when she was yelling they seems like beautiful things. I'm not sure why she would start the song at that exact line, but nevertheless she always did. The next line was the one that I now realize is why my mother choose this song. She'd always look us deep and dead in the eyes and sort of grunt or growl out the words “I know that you're gonna
have it your way or nothing at all.” That's deadly. It is just mean to take a beautifully created song that just perfectly molded itself into one of the top ten songs on the Billboard's Top 100 List of 1995, and turn it into a form of punishment. “Dreams are hopeless aspirations.” she would tell us. I'm not too sure if she was doing it to make us think that we won't excel and reach our dreams by cheating and scamming like we did, or maybe she just thought that we wouldn't understand what the words in the song meant at such a young age and that they'd sound scary. Either way it worked. This made us feel so lousy. Was this song created to make children cry and beg for mercy? My mother would shortly get bored or maybe even feel bad that she put us through what she did, so she'd begin to mellow out. She'd start cleaning and saying things to us like “Is it because my life is ten shades of gray. I pray all ten fade away. Seldom praise Him for the sunny days.” We knew that there was one line we needed before the stability returned in our home. “I think you're moving too fast.” It was over once she said that. It was like the bell that ended class just as your teacher was about to collect the homework that you didn't do. I never understood until recently why that line was the end of all the fighting. I asked her one day, and she wasn't too certain. My mother began to tell me the song came out just before my sister was even a thought in my parents heads. I was growing up, but not like my mother wanted me too. I was growing taller, stronger, smarter, wiser, and more beautiful each and every day, and she couldn't handle that. She wanted me to be her little baby forever. My mother told me that on the first day she heard the song I was in the car with her, and it was just a peaceful day, no worries, we just wanted to reach our destination. The song was just like any other on the radio, just music to make the trip a little less dull and to release stress from sitting in the car so long. She realized that on that day I wouldn't be little forever. One day she'd wake up, and I wouldn't be in her home, I'd be in mine. After all of the years I
was so dependent on her she knew that I wouldn't need her anymore, she just wanted to look at me and tell me “I think you're moving too fast.” Every stage in my life that my mother couldn't handle was eased by that song. It was a quick burst of imagination in my mothers head that made her think that I wouldn't leave her lakes and rivers too go adventure into my own waterfalls. She knew that I wasn't always going to be little forever, but through this song my mother can always bring herself back to the times when we were little and growing together.