When I was an angsty teenager of the 90s, I used to play this Billy Joel song for my mom. On an old, permanently off key piano she grew up with on her parent’s farm.

I plunked and paused, trying to find the right notes. Yet hitting all the wrong ones.

Sometimes hiding her giggles at my fractured playing, sometimes listening with tears in her eyes remembering things I will never know. She always listened patiently, humming along, pausing with me, for however long it took me to find the right notes.

After losing her, just out of high school, I couldn’t listen to this song for quite a few years.

But when I became I mom, it became one of my favorites again.

I’d hum and sing quietly, slightly out of tune, while rocking my babies to sleep, for however long it took.

My babies are all teens now. Thankfully a little less angsty than I was. And I haven’t listened to this song in a while again.

Thanks to the incredible Brandi and this beautiful little cover, I’ll be putting it back in rotation. Remembering why it’s one of my favorites. Remembering my babies, and my mom, and her parents, and that old piano. Remembering how beautifully and how heartbreakingly life goes…

And so it goes, and so it goes.