Toby’s Song
The first thing you notice about him is his fantastic grin. The smile spreads from ear to ear and his eyes light up with an internally-generated joy, combined with a healthy dose of mischief. Of course, he’s about thirteen years old, which is probably the most prolific mischief-making time in a young boy’s life. Looking at this glowing child it’s hard to imagine that his life has been deeply marked with suffering.
I’m going to call him Toby; I don’t want to use his real name because we need to protect his privacy. He’s in foster care at the Whaley Children’s Center in downtown Flint, Michigan. He stays in a nearby group home and goes to school in a tidy, well-organized facility nestled next to a hospital, with a welcoming campus and an incredibly loving and supportive staff.
But as warm and loving as Whaley is, it can’t quite replace his real home, with real family. I don’t know why Toby has been removed from his real home, and I don’t need to know. I’m there with my Lost Voices team to help Toby and some other Whaley kids, all of whom are survivors of severe emotional trauma, explore their feelings in a totally new way – songwriting.
Working on the group song, Toby provides a lot of enthusiastic input. All the kids seem to like him, and it’s easy to see why. He is just plain likable. When we get down to working on individual songs, Toby has a little trouble figuring out what he wants to write about. We finally settle on a convoluted, goofy, and downright funny dream he had, in which he was surfing in his bedroom, was chased by a shark before he ate the shark, then was himself eaten by a squid. We worked on the song for the rest of the day.
The next day Toby announces at the beginning of the session that he has to leave at 11:00 for a visit with his mother. I reorganize the session so I can work with him before he leaves, and he is clearly nervous with anticipation. He also decides that he’s not sure he wants to finish the song about getting eaten by a squid.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Would you like to write about feelings?”
“Yes.”
“What feelings would you like to write about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you could write about love. Or anger. Or fear…”
“Love.”
“Love, great! So what about love?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who do you love?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about your mother?”
“Yes!”
“Ok, great. Let’s write a song about your mother.”
“What time is it?”
“About ten minutes to eleven.”
“She’s coming to see me at eleven.”
“I know. Do you want to work on the song until she gets here?”
“Yes.”
So we work on the song, very slowly because Toby asks for a time update about every 90 seconds. That beautiful smile has gone missing. At about twenty minutes after eleven, we have four lines written, and I’m nearly as anxious about the fact that the visit is late as Toby is. I am just standing up to ask staff to give us an update on Toby’s visit when another staff comes in to take him to his see his mother.
The next day the grin is back.
“How was the visit?”
“It was great!”
“Ready to work on your song?”
“Yes! I wrote some more!” He hands me his Lost Voices Songwriter’s Journal, and he has indeed written more. We spend the rest of our time together that day polishing it up and coming up with just the perfect melody and guitar accompaniment. Here’s Toby’s song:
Love You Mother
Mother, I wish I was with you all the time
Because you are always on my mind
When you hug me I feel fine
Yeah, Mother I wish I was with you all the time.
Bridge
Your smile is like a sunny day
Mother I wish I was with you all the time
Because I was away for seven years
Me and you had tears, and I had some fears
…And I switch gears
I love you mother.
Mother, I love you with all my heart.
I will never forget you. You are like a never-ending river.
Mother I love you all the time
I wish I was with you all the time
Mother you are like a clock, because you never stop.
When Toby and I sing this song at the Lost Voices concert, that child’s grin nearly blinds the entire audience.
Now I have no idea what happened between Toby and his mother that landed him in foster care, and I can only imagine the personal torments she must be dealing with. But I can tell you that this little song captures the pure, unfiltered love a between child and mother as well as anything I have ever heard.
