Today is day 8 in the studio.
We’re working on a song called “Better Not to Know” that Cindy Morgan and I wrote.
My Grandmother Grant died in the spring of 1988 when my first child was 5 months old.
We planted a field of fruit trees in her memory….little leafless sticks with promising root balls.
I lived on that farm another ten years… Had two more children there, and then life took a few unexpected turns.
When I left the farm I left behind the shade of those 75 trees that had grown into a thick canopy over our heads
They never had any fruit.
Evevtually, the farm was sold.
Then this past summer I got a phone call.
The current owner of the property had had the surviving fruit trees pruned, the farm next door had started keeping bees.
My grandmother’s trees were loaded down with peaches and pears and apples.
When Cindy came to my house last fall, I had just made my first batch of pear preserves
We talked and ate and wrote this song:
We sowed our seeds
Watered with tears
Waiting for signs of growth
Took months of days
And then took years.
We took our steps
We took our falls
Somewhere along the way
We just got lost
And we lost it all.
Nothing ventured nothing gained
The risk of living is the pain
And what will be will be anyway
Oh, it’s better not to know
The way it’s gonna go
What will die and what will grow
It’s better not to know
Those tiny stems became these trees
With dirt and storms
And sun and air to breathe
Like you and me
And some fell down
And some grew tall
And those surviving twenty winter thaws
Have the sweetest fruit of all
But innocence and planting day
Are both long gone
So much has changed
And if we got to do it all again …
Oh it’s better not to know…
