I was riding in the car the other day when Elton John’s, “Your Song” popped up. It was released in the spring of 1971, and it struck a chord with me. Ruth and I were in the process of going our separate ways after dating for fifteen months, and I was trying to hang on, when we went on what turned out to be our final date in late May.
She and I went to a cottage at Higgins Lake with my friend, Mike Smith, and the girl he eventually married, Vivian. Mike’s parents owned a small two-bedroom cottage a couple blocks from the lake, and the four of us went there for the Memorial Day weekend. I sensed we were ending our time together, and didn’t want to surrender without a fight, so I bought a cassette tape with the song and played it while we were alone one evening.
She may have liked the song, but we broke up shortly after just the same. She’d begun a relationship with the guy who sold her a 1971 Ford Pinto. I should have realized a guy selling Pinto’s for a living couldn’t hold on to a girl like her, but moving on without her hurt just the same.
It’s a simple song. It’s a declaration of love, and about the fact that it doesn’t matter what color a person’s eyes are, what matters is who they belong to. It’s who’s inside that counts. Over time, I learned she used her eyes to look at the world in great detail. To see things in a way that others didn’t or couldn’t. Perhaps we just didn’t take the time that she did, or maybe she just cared a bit more.
I always considered “Your Song” to be our song. We didn’t talk about it, and she probably didn’t remember my feeble attempt to keep hold of her heart through a cassette tape. But I do.