Will You Still Need Me? (59)

Not the way I dreamed it, of learning to sing the whole song so I could sing it all year while I was sixty-three. But here is my little slightly off key (or more than slightly??!) snippet of “When I’m 64” by the Beatles.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJHdQhCgeNX0RoGtJys9UC2QCjl8rAoX/view?usp=sharing

I Sing with the Beatles (52)

In my joy class we sing “With a Little Help from My Friends,” all of us swaying and clapping together in our little Zoom boxes. After, I have Alexa play it for me again and again until I memorize all the words. I pick “When I’m 64” to learn next because I think I should sing it throughout the coming year while I’m 63. Late at night I sit in the living room, heater and ice-maker noises behind me, solar Christmas lights on the succulents outside the window, headlights on the 210 moving like water in the distance between the black curves of the foothills. My eyes close while I type, and I jerk awake more than once, but when I finish my work, I look for the song. I find the music with the lyrics, and I play it on my laptop with the volume turned way down. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?” My knees bounce as my feet move, and I sing along, delighted with the music and the words, the minds and hearts that made them. I am lifted out of my limited self in the quiet night, unhindered, even happy, spread out like the valley to the west, silent now in the late dark.