Mid-Life Crisis Songs #29 - Slipping Through My Fingers

A good friend of mine, only a few years older than me but with two teenage children, told me a story recently about how she was driving her daughter down the country to look at universities and they were choosing songs to play on the car radio as they went. (Speech recognition now allows you to ask the car radio to play a track from your library - Louise has this facility in her car too, though I'm still in the CD age - how freakin' sci-fi scary is this world we live in now?) As I'm trying to do with my boy, my friend has spent many years indoctrinating her kids with the joys of her own record collection... but when her daughter chose this particular track, well, let's just say the mascara starting running.

29. Abba - Slipping Through My Fingers

Slipping Through My Fingers, sung by Agnetha, is about a mother bemoaning the speed that her daughter is growing up. Although it was written when Bjorn and Agnetha's daughter was only 7 years old, the sentiments apply from the moment your child is born really. This little person who is your world will one day fly the nest - as they have to - and you'll be all alone again, except for the occasional visit or phone call. You try to cherish every moment they're with you,but it goes so fast...

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning

Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile

I watch her go with a surge of that well known sadness

And I have to sit down for a while

The feeling that I'm losing her forever

And without really entering her world

I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter

That funny little girl

This is hitting me particularly hard right now because Sam starts school in September. Excuse me, I think I've got something in my eye...

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table

Barely awake I let precious time go by

Then when she's gone, there's that odd melancholy feeling

And a sense of guilt I can't deny

What happened to the wonderful adventures

The places I had planned for us to go

Well, some of that we did, but most we didn't

And why, I just don't know

Apparently, Slipping Through My Fingers is featured - to devastating effect - in the movie Mamma Mia!, as sung by Meryl Streep. Another reason for me to never watch that movie then...

(Oh, and if you're wondering about the Coca-Cola cover above: the track was only released as a single in Japan, as a marketing promo for Coke. Don't get me started...)