Fifty for Fifi

Here we come to the year of Fi’s birth and the year count starts in earnest.

I was five in 1975. If you’ll recall yesterday’s post, Fi and I are in a lifelong cringe competition, so she often likes to remind me of that age difference. Even better, she’ll give other age comparisons and, for example, ask me if she would have been my twelve year old girlfriend when I was seventeen. Answer: No.

At some point, though, the numbers became manageable and we brought our lives together, which leads us on to today’s song.

The Captain and Tenille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” is a sweet little song. Sweet enough to come top of Billboard’s hot 100 singles for 1975. It was originally released by Neil Sedaka a couple of years earlier, but 1975 was when charting success hit for the cover. My favourite elements are the funky keyboard solo, the thrilling modulation and Toni Tenille’s powerful voice.

Fun fact: The Captain’s real name was Daryl Dragon.

Love has kept Fi and I together, and the weather has not always been easy. For me the test of that was when Fi had her stroke. Those were some very dark days as we tried to learn how to survive with both of our lives fundamentally changed. For my part I had to help Fi cope and still provide our daughter, then three, with as normal as possible a childhood as I could. We made it through with the love between the two of us, but also from love and support provided to us by others in our lives. My mother-in-law, Ann in particular helped us cope by giving us plenty of what we called “Gaggy nights” so we could just be a couple of adults together.

More recently Fi has been on the flip side of the carer relationship, with me facing health challenges of my own in the last few years. Her love for me has been shown by keeping the family and herself together so I have been able to focus on rest, respite and recovery in times of need. It’s a time we seem to be through, touch wood.

As for the Captain and Tenille… well in the long run love didn’t keep them together given they divorced in 2014 and Tenille’s memoir does not portray a happy situation, but despite all that they were together at the end when he passed away in 2019.

Either way, it’s a lovely song to welcome someone into the world with. Happy Birth Day, Fi!

When I looked for this song, I found it didn’t qualify. Yes, I’m sure there are some few October babies that are born the year before – the longest pregnancy lasting 375 days – but while I haven’t checked dates with Fi’s mother, given her family’s fondness for storytelling I’m sure I’d have heard about an abnormally delayed delivery at some point. I was thus disappointed when I looked up this song and found that it was from 1974 – in my dream it would have been published a year later and would be a great launch.

So I cheated and here we are with one more extra having already given two songs away for free.

1974’s (You’re) Havin’ My Baby by Paul Anka was… controversial when it came out. Like all Anka songs, it’s catchy and well written but even then it was seen as, well misogynistic and creepy. If you take the time to listen to this one, you’ll very likely find the lyrics full of cringe with lines like “Whoa, the seed inside ya, baby, do you feel it growin’?” and of course the repeated description of the upcoming child as “my” rather than “our” baby. Then there’s the line referenced from the post title, in which Anka references in song form the then-recent Roe V. Wade decision. Anka represented himself as an ally supporting a woman’s right to choose (but choose to keep), Ms. Magazine voted him as Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year.

Fi and I discovered it, or rediscovered it while she was pregnant with our daughter. Making each other cringe heavily has always been a sport in our relationship, and this particular song during that particular time turned into a lethal weapon. We’d sneak it onto playlists, spring it out as driving music, you name it. We’re neither of us quitters, so there was no fast forwarding to bypass the song.

Politics and cringy lyrics aside, it is a hell of a catchy tune.

Another of the lyrics – which really underestimates the commitment that pregnancy and childbirth represent – is “what a lovely way of sayin’ what you’re thinkin’ of me”. Well I’m thinking of my wife, and what I am thinking is the best way to start this is by bringing the cringe back.

OK, so we”re not quite at the start of things as yet. If we count back a year each day from Fi’s birthday on October 25th, we’d be posting the song for the year of her birth, 1975, on September 5th.

I’m actually starting the countdown from the 4th with a song from 1974. No, I know people born in October generally aren’t conceived the year before, however the song in question was too delicious to leave out. You’ll see tomorrow.

How did I choose the songs? Some chose themselves – special songs in our lives, from our courtship when we had a shared playlist, or songs that we loved together the year they came out. That plugged in a fair number of holes in my excel spreadsheet. A large number were found by googling the songs of that year and finding ones I vibed with, and I’ll be completely honest – some years aren’t filled in yet. Mainly those ones are since we had our daughter and traded out current music for kids’ songs that were recorded in earlier years, some of which you’ll see. We’ll have to see what happens when I get to those years – probably more frantic googling.

So that’s the plan. We’ve got a partially autobiographical and partially musicological playlist to work through. Sometimes both. In the meantime, the work hasn’t quite started yet so:

Some of you reading may know that Fi and I met via a blogging challenge.

More than a decade ago now (2011 to be precise), I decided to join a transtasman library industry blogging challenge to blog every day of June, known as #blogjune.

Participants would register their interest and a list was posted by the organisers. From there on it was up to participants to either follow and read who they wanted to or to follow the blogjune hashtag on Twitter.

I went to the list and opened up dozens of blogs in new tabs. Some I just couldn’t get into, others I could so I set up to add them to my RSS aggregator. One of them, of course, was Fi.

Did I drop all to pursue her there and then? Absolutely not. Did I notice her? Absolutely. At the end of that first month in June 2011, she dropped a post with a video. The video was of her singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me”. I was touched by her vulnerability and bravery. As a musician and performer myself, the way she put herself out there was inspiring.

After that, mutual follows and growing friendship and now here we are, 9 years married last week.

So what’s the story here, then?

A blogging challenge is how we met, so a blogging challenge is how I’ll celebrate her life so far. Please join us in that celebration. The challenge is to create fifty (plus a couple more) days of blogging to celebrate my now wife’s 50 years of living. Each day will include a song from a year of her life going from 1975 to 2025. There will be musings around that song and our life together. Simple? Simple.