Guess Who

Whenever this song, or American Woman, or These Eyes, or No Sugar Tonight/Mother Nature, came on the radio, my father would ask, "Guess who sings this song?"

"Who?" one of us would invariably ask.

"No, Guess who."


At 4 am on January 20, 2009, I drove out to the hospital where Billy would be born that morning, Jake in passenger seat because that's how it works around here (I get carsick, ugh, and 9 months pregnant?). This song was on not one, not two, but three different stations on the way out west. It's not his song (that would be "Cassidy" by the Grateful Dead--each of my children has a "song" and there are elaborate arguments over whose is best--Willie Porter's "Mystery" and Taj Majal's "Irresistible You" are the two girls'). But it stays with me.