When I realized I had the all the music the soldier had left, I called him. He was also on the road coming in from the other direction.  “Remember you made me, P ’s songs 2?” I asked. “I have that cd, I’d forgotten.  Listen,” I said, turning the music up loud.  Driver’s Seat blared from the speakers.

I was listening to it thinking of the time I drove down the road my truck on fire. My truck was on fire so bad, the plastic seat cover I was sitting on was melting beneath me, fat drops of melted blue plastic plopping to the floor right under my ass. I put that story in my book for entertainment value, to drive down the road with your truck on fire is Mars Mercury in living color, but anyway I played him a bit of the cd and then turned the volume down, he was shocked.

“I just want you to know I have this, ” I said. “I’m going to listen to it and give it to you when you leave so you can listen to it but then bring it home, okay? We have to copy this.  I mean, we just can’t forget okay so just be sure to bring it home…”

I hung up the phone thinking of copying the cd when he got home and wondering if I should make a copy of it for his son while I was at it. I’d thought about this before.

I have talked the soldier’s son about these songs. I pretty much had to because I talk to you (the blog) about these songs and if you can know, he can know, it’s such a slice of his dad.

I have thought about sending them to him as well. I have sent him some of them, links on youtube, but I mean the full cd. Would this be right? If so is this the time?

The situation is further complicated in that there are 2 cds and it was at this point in the car I recalled I had the first cd as well. Yep, I have it, stuck away sort of like those pictures of me his mother kept in a box for 25 years. Not that we are similar or anything.

In whatever case it’s a complicated question because the original P’s songs the soldier sent in 2003 tell a story - our story - but P’s songs 2 tell our story with the grueling parts left in. If I am going to give his son the story do I give him “the story” or the story?

I mean it is a clear window into his dad’s emotion and inner life. It is the clearest one he will ever find and I do think he’d feel it so do I send the story or the story with the horrible pain in the middle? Do I send one and then the other, years apart the way I got them, or do I wait 10 years?

This stuff was in the front of my mind because as most of your know the soldier and I watched his family movies a couple weeks ago and it was something else to see his father, who passed some years ago, young and vibrantly alive. Got his blood all stirred up, mine too so I was mulling all this, Temptation Eyes blaring…

To be continued