The song that asks "Did You?"

It’s the end of another seemingly endless day that’s basically identical to so many that came before it that the only tangible difference seems to be who I did the favor for, rescued or listened to when all I wanted to do was grieve for who I thought I would be by now.

I’m happy being the human hub for getting people what they need from comfort to food, jobs or a ride to work. I know the names of all the homeless in my area because it’s important for people to know that you know their names. When someone needs an ear it’s usually mine and I love and foster that.

What I didn’t recognize was that I was burying myself in altruism to deflect from a marriage where my husband had completely checked out after four kids. It was a life of endless servitude so that I could feel like I mattered to someone, anyone.

Then I went on an assignment for the New York Times to do a feature on a Philadelphia area Songwriter, Dierdre Flint. I had all my queries lined-up and then her song “Did You” asked me a simple series of questions and in doing so, became my song.

The answers were all, “I did.”

It’s not a fancy song or even a famous one. The first time I heard it she was practicing for a set, just Dierdre and her acoustic guitar sitting there spilling my inner life into a hot mic.

In case you’re wondering how you know when it’s “your song,” I believe it’s when you hear it and start to look around to see if people are staring at you like it’s some surreal TV show situation where they secretly bug your life and then play it back for you in the form of a ballad.

"Another working day is done

A day, a week, a year is gone

And every breath you're further from

The one you meant to be"

I’d love to be able to say the song saved me the night I first heard it. I’d like to report that it snapped me back to who I was, but the truth is it didn’t have that kind of power. The power it had was to be there for me thousands of times over a 20-year span as I clung to being the helper and never helped myself until it was nearly too late.

"You can't recall the moment when

That Someday turned to Could-a-Been

But a weak voice in you now and then

Asks, what became of you?"

My dream seemed simple. I wanted to marry a man who would never cheat, abuse and leave, like my father did. It was to never be divorced, no matter what, but to always find some way to make his life so good he would never want to leave.

I became a children’s author, a chess teacher, the “mom” of every wayward teen and lost soul. Anything her ever wanted I found a way to help him make happen. His dreams came true and then he called them nightmares and blamed me for getting the fulfillment order all wrong.

"A dream so loaded down with hope

It never would have flown

But would the fall hurt this much

As this, never having known?"

Whenever I got frustrated with my life I’d get angry at the song and consider putting it out of my mind until I started to sing the refrain - the game-changer:

"Did you stop believing

Just short of your miracle?

Did you think a dream come true

Was the right of someone else?

Did you wave a white flag

When you knew you had a prayer left?

And did you give more chances

To a stranger than yourself?"

"Like me?

I did

Did you?"

Right there, at the moment her voice gets light and wistful as she lets me know that she’s paying it forward to me so I can pay it forward to you, is where it becomes your song.

After 30 years, four sons and more emotional beat-down than anyone should be able to endure, my ex-husband abruptly called it quits a week before our 30th wedding anniversary and just walked away as if the entire three decades had never happened. My white flag was in tatters from having waved for so long, but it was there and so was I.

It was, maybe, the worst miracle in the history of miracles but it was mine. I didn’t know that for a year, but now I know it was my miracle.

People ask me how I came through it all and still had what it took to go back out into the world looking for my next miracle, knowing that a dream come true is also my right. I don’t often tell them my story. I just play them their new song.

I do.

Will you?