Kathleen

All the other girls here are stars
You are the Northern Lights
They try to shine through your curtains
You're too close and too bright
They try and they try but everything that they do
Is the ghost of a pale imitation of you
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

~ Josh Ritter

This post is a happy birthday tribute to my best friend.  Anyone who knows Kathy would agree with the first two lines of this gorgeous Josh Ritter song.  Kathy shines with her kindness, her generosity, her compassion, and her loyalty.  Oh, I could go on and on with laudatory descriptions of the person Kathy is, but suffice it to say that she is one of the best human beings I have ever known.  So happy birthday, Kathy!

When I was googling for the lyrics to this song, I kept finding links to the old Irish ballad, I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, most notably recorded by Bing Crosby in 1952.  There seems to be a similarity, at least regarding the idea of taking someone named Kathleen home.  Although "home" in the old song would appear to be Ireland (ancestral home of my friend Kathy), as it turns out, that is a misconception.  The song was written by Thomas P. Westendorf in 1875 for his wife Jennie, and "home" was Germany!  Whatever, the song still works as a beloved Irish ballad.

But back to Josh Ritter's beautiful song, Kathleen.  The song appears on Ritter's 2003 "divorce record," The Beast in Its Tracks.  Ritter had just gone through a painful divorce and returned to songwriting as a healing act.  The treatment seemed to work, as by the time of the record's release, Josh had a new girlfriend.  Mother Jones called the album The Cheeriest Breakup Album Ever.    Kathleen tells the story of a young woman at a party being offered a ride home by the protagonist.  Clearly, she is out of his league, but she accepts the ride.  He revels in the memory.  One of the lines that makes me smile is this one:  So crawl up your trellis and quietly back into your room.  I've lost count of the stories Kathy has told me about her badass teenage years when she would regularly sneak out of her room and head to the bars.  I'm a few years older than Kathy, a product of a more rigid time, so I never snuck out of my room, and I never hung out at a bar until I was of legal age (which, at the time, was only 18 in neighboring New York state).  But I can't help but wonder if I would have been sneaking out with Kathy if we had known each other growing up.  I suspect I would have.

Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied.  This line, near the end of the song, demands contemplation.  Our hearts are not designed to be isolated.  They plead for interaction, for connection, for reassurance.  Call it love.  If the connections get tangled up, is that a good or bad thing?  Could be either, I suppose.  In this case, I would like to think that the ribbons that have tied my heart to Kathy's will never be loosened.  I love you, Kath.  You are as awesome as the Northern Lights.