There is a story that is often told about a young Bradley, and a guitar.  Bradley’s grandparents lived near the Alderwood Mall, a place that, now, does not seem all that country.  But when they bought the property back in the late 60’s or early 70’s where the Alderwood Mall stands now was all swamp and horse pasture.  I remember Grandpa telling me, on a number of occasions, that he thought he was moving to the country with the swamp and acreage around them.  They never anticipated that they would live next to one of the busiest shopping malls in all of Washington.  The city grew up around the house, which was probably pretty nice for them as time progressed.   As Grandma and Grandpa got older and less capable of doing, they became even more interested in watching the activity, construction and remodeling around them.  When Bradley was still a toddler, he managed to escape his parent’s and grandparent’s watchful eyes and he wandered off to the field next door where they were beginning to excavate for a new store, hotel, building, something… When they realized that their boy was missing, the adults in charge streaked around the house and the yard without finding the young Brad-Boy.  But they could hear him.  Off in the distance they heard a little baby voice, singing at the top of his lungs, “GUITAR!  GUITAR!”  Only it sounded more like ‘Gee-tar’.  Then they spied that little singer, on top of a mound of soil, holding a guitar, strumming and singing his little heart out.  The worry of the missing boy left their minds as they laughed and listened to their passionate musician sing his one-word song.  It was the dawning of a key component of my husband.

It took until he discovered The Beatles as a young teen for him to pick up the guitar again.  With a little help from his Uncle Don and a library full of Beatles chord books, Bradley taught himself how to play the guitar.  Bradley played in a band or two in high school and a bit in college, but about the time we got together  the musicians he played with began to be inspired by different things, fell in love, became sucessful and they drifted apart.

(Bradley, stop reading, because I’m gonna brag on you now.)

And he is good.  I had friends who played in high school and college, but it wasn’t until I heard Bradley play for the first time (PJ Harvey’s Sheela Na Gig, some Morrissey and even the Bradley Littlejohn original ‘Rain and Sunshine, in case you were wondering) that I realized that REAL people can play instruments WELL too. He didn’t just strum, he picked, he soloed, he finger styled…  I was enthralled, amazed, and despite having a boyfriend, developed a bit of a crush on this cute boy who had a guitar and singing skillz in spades, not to mention his blonde ‘cute boy’ hair and a smile that wouldn’t quit.  We got together under the ruse of guitar lessons, by the way.  But by the time I learned the G and D chords we had found out that kissing was pretty fun too and the guitar lessons stopped.  During the first few years we were together, the guitar went everywhere with us.  And places where the guitar couldn’t go were filled with the sounds of Bradley’s voice: on the way into Target, in the car, walking home from WWU, Bradley’s voice was our constant companion, bouncing off of buildings and echoing all around us.  But then?  We got busy.  Babies came, houses needed building and remodeling, college had to be finished and a myriad of tasks and commitments pulled my darling away from his guitar.  Then the songs began to become quieter and then they nearly went away.  I began to wonder if the guitar and the singing were a thing of the past.  Something we would look back on fondly and wish we had kept up with.

The months, well, year, after we finished the house (our one year moving in anniversary was a few days ago) was a pretty dark time for us.  While we weren’t in a war or anything, there was definitely a level of post traumatic stress, a lot of anxiety and a fair share of depression in the both of us.  We were just SO spent from building the house and it took a long time to recover from it.

About the time we were beginning to exit the fog of funk in February or so, Bradley picked up the guitar.  At first I thought it was mostly just mindless strumming, but then he started playing.  And singing.  For hours.  These days, again, the guitar is never far from his fingers.  I make dinner, fold laundry, and clean the house with my own personal troubadour following me around, playing our favorites.  It is a great trade.  With the advent of the internet, he can look any song up and within five minutes or so he has the chords and words for us to wail along to.  (While I am not a singer per se, I love to sing.)  It has added that wonderful connectedness back into our lives, and I love it.  His songs these days focus more family requests, like Taylor Swift and the Star Wars Theme Song instead of his own material, but I am so grateful and appreciative of my darling, talented, guitar-playing husband’s return.  What a gift we have in him.

 


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