Samuel

Don't know much about you. Don't know who you are. We've been doing fine without you but we could only go so far. Don't know why you chose us. Were you watching from above? Is there someone there that knows us, said we'd give you all our love?

Will you laugh just like your mother? Will you sigh like your old man? Will some things skip a generation like I've heard they often can? Are you a poet or a dancer, a devil or a clown? Or a strange new combination of the things we've handed down.

You may not always be so grateful for the way that you were made. Some feature of your father's that you'd gladly sell or trade. And one day you may look at us and say that you were cursed. But over time that line has been extremely well rehearsed by our fathers, and their fathers in some old and distant town. From places no one here remembers come the things we've handed down.
-- Marc Cohn