Song 10 of 20
Song 10 of 20
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The husband and wife have now been together for many years. They have raised children, survived arguments, built homes, changed careers, aged and watched one another become different people from the pair who first fell in love. They know each other's faults as well as their strengths. The song finds them looking at one another in the present, after enough shared history that neither has many illusions left about who the other person really is.
The map lies folded by the chairYou unpin silver from your hairOne earring settles in the trayYou catch me watching. “What?” you sayWarm lamplight finds your shoulder bareI cross the room; you meet me thereYour fingers straighten out my sleeveBut take their time before they leave
Your younger smile comes shining throughMade richer by the life in you
Still you, with every layer shownStill you, more deeply seen and knownNo still frame holds the living sumOf all you are and have becomeNo calendar can make me stayI choose you as you are todayWith open eyes, I choose anewThe living answer: still, still you
One winter, pride outstayed the fightWe slept back-to-back through the nightBy dawn, you named the part you ownedI named the truth I’d long postponedThe hurt was heard, then put awayIt never got the final sayYou smile and say my facts are wrongI love your clear mind, keen and strong
The years stripped every guess awayLeaving the truth I choose today
Still you, with every layer shownStill you, more deeply seen and knownNo still frame holds the living sumOf all you are and have becomeNo calendar can make me stayI choose you as you are todayWith open eyes, I choose anewThe living answer: still, still you
I know which jokes conceal your fearWhich brave “I’m fine” means “Keep me near”I’ve seen your blueprints split in twoI watched you build a way back throughYou’re twenty minutes early stillEach small repair becomes a drillYou’re not the man from yesterdayI choose the one you are today
Still you, with every layer shownStill you, more deeply seen and knownNot who we were or used to beI choose who stands in front of meMarks on a page don’t make us stayWe choose each other here todayWith open eyes, we choose anewAnd choose the changing, living you
You laugh and draw me gently near“Enough of words. Come over here.”
Your younger smile comes shining throughMade richer by the life in you
Still you, with every layer shownStill you, more deeply seen and knownNo still frame holds the living sumOf all you are and have becomeNo calendar can make me stayI choose you as you are todayWith open eyes, I choose anewThe living answer: still, still you
One winter, pride outstayed the fightWe slept back-to-back through the nightBy dawn, you named the part you ownedI named the truth I’d long postponedThe hurt was heard, then put awayIt never got the final sayYou smile and say my facts are wrongI love your clear mind, keen and strong
The years stripped every guess awayLeaving the truth I choose today
Still you, with every layer shownStill you, more deeply seen and knownNo still frame holds the living sumOf all you are and have becomeNo calendar can make me stayI choose you as you are todayWith open eyes, I choose anewThe living answer: still, still you
I know which jokes conceal your fearWhich brave “I’m fine” means “Keep me near”I’ve seen your blueprints split in twoI watched you build a way back throughYou’re twenty minutes early stillEach small repair becomes a drillYou’re not the man from yesterdayI choose the one you are today
Still you, with every layer shownStill you, more deeply seen and knownNot who we were or used to beI choose who stands in front of meMarks on a page don’t make us stayWe choose each other here todayWith open eyes, we choose anewAnd choose the changing, living you
You laugh and draw me gently near“Enough of words. Come over here.”
Behind The Song
Behind The Song
The Living Answer asks what love means after time has removed the mystery.
Young lovers necessarily know only part of one another.
They see attraction, promise, character under limited circumstances and the beginnings of compatibility. Much remains projection.
Decades change that.
You learn how the other person behaves when exhausted, frightened, wrong, successful, embarrassed, sick, angry and disappointed. You witness mistakes. You experience apologies that matter and apologies that do not. You watch ambitions fail or change. Bodies age. Opinions develop. Habits harden or improve.
Time supplies evidence.
The song's mature romantic proposition is that lasting love should not mean remaining permanently obligated to a judgment made long ago.
A wedding date cannot make someone valuable.
A vow cannot manufacture admiration.
History alone cannot require desire.
Instead, these two people look at the individuals who exist now and find continuing reasons to choose.
That makes the love stronger rather than less romantic.
They no longer love imagined future versions of each other. They have been allowed to witness one another becoming.
There is enormous intimacy in that.
A longtime spouse may know versions of us that nobody else alive knows: the failed plan, the private fear, the younger ambition, the argument we remember differently, the road by which the present person came to exist.
To be known across time, and still valued, is one of long love's unique rewards.
But the song remains grounded in freedom.
“No calendar can make me stay.”
That line carries the whole idea.
The living answer is not:
I chose you once.
It is:
Knowing far more now, I choose the person standing here.
The Takeaway
The Takeaway
A vow can preserve a commitment, but it cannot manufacture value. Mature love becomes something deeper when years of evidence replace youthful projection and the judgment remains: knowing who you actually became, including what time revealed and changed, I still find you profoundly worth choosing. That is not merely loyalty to an old decision. It is a living answer.
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