A lyric and thoughts for a cloudy Monday morning

I'm sitting here at my writer's window in my house. The sky is covered by a low blanket of gray clouds. The grass is browning. The black trees are bare.

I've just run my high school freshman son to school.

I'm going over the play-by-play package and my notes from the Bengals-Raiders game. I'm reading about the Colts, Cincinnati's opponent a week from tonight (see previous post).

As usual, music and coffee are on. Gifts. I have received email from readers in the past week that has asked if I am OK, why no song lyrics, why no personal blog entries? Well, I don't want to create a stink with the intense Bengals fans who want nothing but football on this site, no matter how much that continues to rot what's left of my brain. But that's my problem, not theirs. No complaints. It's a great job.

But, because I was asked ...

I'm listening to Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose," the magnificent record she made in 2004 with Jack White of White Stripes.

As the father of two hard-of-hearing children, I have always been struck by the song "God Makes No Mistakes." I have had to fight to overcome the guilt. I have watched my children, especially my oldest son, struggle to overcome their hearing loss. I have had to try to work with even well-meaning people in his life (educators) who don't understand and refuse to understand the subtle nature of his battle (IEPs), that how even aided he can miss up to 40 percent of a conversation, how incredibly bright and resiliant he is to function as a mainstream student with a task as apparently simple as taking notes in a history or literature class. I learn from him. I admire his work ethic. He makes me proud. Somehow, the school dropped the ball this semester, and his science teacher didn't even know my son had a hearing loss. I suggested to my boy that he celebrate the accomplishment. He gave me a half smile.

I also am always humbled by and appreciative of what I see at Children's Hospital when I walk up to the audiology department with either my son or daughter, or both. In those regular visits, my children see a lot, too. Other's challenges are greater than theirs and surely greater than mine.

But I digress.

Loretta writes and croons, as if she's singing to and for me:

"Why, I've heard people say
Why is this tree bent?
Why don't they know God enough to know
That's the way it was meant.

"Why is this little baby born
All twisted and bent out of shape?
We're not question what he does
'Cause God makes no mistakes."