November 28, 2005

Last Saturday I taught an aerobics class using a new CD I hadn’t listened to ahead of time. Everything was going well, and then a song came on that sounded familiar. As I called out the steps, I thought, wait, can this really be a cover of that song? And shortly thereafter it became clear that yes, this really could be a cover of that song. It was “Without You,” originally by Harry Nilsson, recorded later, Google informs me, by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Air Supply, and Kelly Clarkson. The lyrics, for those of you unfamiliar with the song, go as follows:

No, I can’t forget this evening,
Or your face as you were leaving,
But I guess that’s just the way the story goes.
You always smile, but in your eyes your sorrow shows;
Yes, it shows.

No, I can’t forget tomorrow
When I think of all my sorrow,
When I had you there but then I let you go.
And now it’s only fair that I should let you know
What you should know:

I can’t live if living is without you.
I can’t live, I can’t give any more.
I can’t live if living is without you.
I can’t give, I can’t give any more.

After about fifteen seconds of trying to teach to the song, I ran over to the stereo, said brightly, “Okay, folks, I have totally traumatic associations with this song, so we’re going to skip it!”, and moved to the next song, which was, if memory serves, some Kylie Minogue thing.

I’m sure they all thought it was a breakup song, which was just fine by me. Because actually my traumatic associations with the song have to do with the fact that my mother conceived a child before me but miscarried. She told me a story once about coming home after the doctor gave her the news and waiting in the car while my father went into the pharmacy to get her anti-cramp medication, turning on the radio, and listening to “Without You.” And now I can never hear that song without thinking of my mother there in the turned-off car, mourning her dead child–whom they had been referring to as Junior–probably knowing that even if she had more children eventually her illness would ravage her body and kill her in the prime of her life, as in fact it did. I can’t hear that song without thinking of her blighted hopes and her constant struggle against pain and her childhood lived in fear of a monstrous mother and the magnitude of what she was able to accomplish in the world despite the deck stacked so mercilessly against her.

When I’m shopping in the drugstore and “Without You” comes on the radio, it’s not such a big deal; I can take a moment, get wistful, and then go back to hoping that Rembrandt® Toothpaste will make my teeth so white it will solve all my problems.

But when I’m in front of a room full of type-A twenty-somethings, shrieking, “Around the world! Knees higher! I know you can do it! Make the calories beg for mercy!”, hearing anybody sing You always smile, but in your eyes, your sorrow shows. . . . I can’t live if living is without you, I can’t give, I can’t give any more is simply more than I am equipped to handle.