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I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform this Harry Belafonte/Alan Greene/Malvina Reynolds song on Father’s Day, and it’s put me into a (plainly lasting) nostalgic and wistful mood:
Where are you going, my baby, my own?
Turn around and you’re two,
Turn around and you’re four,
Turn around and you’re a young girl going out of my door.
Turn around, turn around,
Turn around and you’re a young girl going out of my door.
Where are you going, my little one, little one,
Little dirndls and petticoats, where have you gone?
Turn around and you’re tiny,
Turn around and you’re grown,
Turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.
Turn around, turn around,
Turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.
I’ve always been strangely moved by the comment of the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob, at the end of his life, in which, rather strangely, he says that “the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream” (Jacob 7:26).
I was haunted by those words when I was young, and, now that I’m hurtling rapidly toward old age, I understand how very true they are.
It all goes by so amazingly fast.
If you don’t already know it, you soon will. Sooner than you can imagine. And you, too, will be surprised.
Continuing with that same sentimental vein, I offer Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” In this recording, the back-up singers are David Crosby, Steve Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young. Five of my favorites.
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