Seven Years

“Gentleman Jim” Reeves sang or recited a composition called “Seven Days.” Perhaps it was half of each. He started out singing in that gloriously smooth voice he had:

Seven days can be a long, Long time, my friend, When you’re thinkin’ ’bout the cold, black chair With straps for both your hands . . .

In the words of a much more recent celebrity, “That escalated quickly.” A song about a cheating woman and the men who loved her, with one killed and the other facing the electric chair for the death of the first as she goes on to have more affairs. That’s old country music for you. The album, Talkin' to Your Heart, was released in 1961. That was a long time ago. Most people alive today were not then. It was before I was born, and I’m officially old. At the end of next month, we’ll be noting the sixty-second anniversary of Reeves’ passing. I was born before he died. I suppose you could say that my cultural references are slightly dated. Even my more modern reference at the beginning of this paragraph was from 2004. That was now twenty-two years ago. According to the song, seven days can be a long, long time, yet it seems to me that years can pass in the blink of an eye. The Ron Burgundy movies started coming out in 2004? It seems like yesterday.

And then there is today. It’s a day that is loaded up this year. It is June 21^st. It has the summer solstice, marking the first day of summer. It is also Father’s Day here in these United States. Of course, with Father’s Day set as the third Sunday in June, it will always be between June 15^th and June 21^st. It’s bound to hit the solstice every seven years on average. Of course, the solstice moves and can be on either the 20^th or 21^st. To be very precise, the solstice will occur at 8:25 AM UT today according to my sources. That was a few hours ago now. Welcome to summer. And Happy Father's Day.

June 21^st in 2019 was a Friday. Seven years ago, it was the solstice day but not Father’s Day. That had come earlier that year, on the 16^th. That was the day my father died. Seven years does not seem like a long time at all. In 2020, June 21^st coïncided with Father’s Day. I am not sure whether I noticed the coïncidence then. There was the first anniversary of his death on Father’s Day. I do not remember having noticed that. I may not have wanted to think about it at all. I may have suppressed having noticed. But I am noticing it today.

It’s funny the way the calendar falls. With three-hundred-sixty-five days per year, the dates migrate by a day each year, mostly. Next year, June 21^st will be on a Monday. The exceptions come due to leap years. That extra day makes all the days jump by two for a year. That’s why the last time June 21^st was Father’s Day was six years ago instead of seven. The next time it should happen will be skipped due to a leap year. Thus, the next June 21^st Father’s Day will be in 2037. Eleven more years. Maybe I won’t think about it so hard then. I can’t think of any songs that talk about eighteen years or eighteen days.

The soundtrack of my mind plays on,
Sometimes random. Sometimes.
But other times, it rules my thoughts,
Reviving long dead days through rhymes.