Dad With the Far Away Eyes

how the stones will forever make me think of my father's happiness

I have a distinct memory of walking in on my father while he was singing the Rolling Stones’ “Far Away Eyes.” His voice was not only off-key, but it came off like someone pretending to sing badly; it was a caricature. But he was serious as all get-out, smiling as he sang, not even attempting to hit those notes. He truly loves that song and, despite his massacre of it, it showed.

It’s no coincidence that Some Girls is my favorite Stones album. All my childhood/youth memories are associated with music in one form or another, and I closely associate that album with my dad. My heart warms every time I hear “Far Away Eyes,” thinking of him belting it out, so unabashed, so happy.

There are other songs I associate with my father and specific memories. My life is a timeline of singles, my brain a mental jukebox where I put an imaginary quarter in and press a few keys to get instant flashbacks of times happy, sad, painful, carefree. Watching him grab my mother and swing her into an impromptu dance in the backyard to “Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles. Putting my feet on his while he danced me around to “Earth Angel.” Ridiculing him in my teenage way over his love of Rod Stewart, and him jabbing me back over my love of The Doors.

We have a good relationship. We always did, even when I rebelled in my teen years, even when I didn’t take his advice — which always in hindsight turned out to be right — even when I made bad decisions and I knew he was disappointed in me. I spent most of my life trying hard to please him but at the same time sabotaging those attempts by acting in the opposite of my best interests. It made for some tense times, but underneath that tension there was always the implicit truth that he would love me no matter what, and that comforted me throughout my life.

I’m 59 now, mostly removed from those praise-seeking days. Our relationship is on an even keel now, two adults talking baseball, mostly. I live across the street from my parents, having recently bought the house my father grew up in. We see each other often and I treasure the time I spend with him now, even if we’re arguing about the Mets and Yankees.

My dad is 80. You’d never know it if you met him, you’d spend a few minutes with him and swear he’s in his 60s. He’s fit, he’s healthy, he always appears to me as if he’s in the prime of his life. But I think about aging often, and I think too much — mostly at 3am — of the inevitable. I’ve thought myself into a panic attack many times, that suffocating, anxious feeling of death hanging over you that reaches you most often in the middle of the night but can grab you by surprise in the middle of the day.

When these moments hit me and I’m feeling like I don’t have enough time left with him, when I think that life is fleeting and I need to hold on to my memories of him even while we’re making more, I turn to the Stones. I put on “Far Away Eyes” and I’m instantly comforted by the memory of him happily singing along in his office, unaware, or mostly likely unperturbed, that anyone was watching him. He sang to my siblings and myself often when we were young (“Daddy’s Little Girl” was particularly touching) despite his off kilter vocal styling. We would laugh and yell at him to not sing to us, please, but it was all in fun and we actually loved when he’d sing. “Far Away Eyes” was not for us, though. It was for him, for his own pleasure, and he belted it out like he could actually hold a note. We had “our” songs. This was his song, and as such would be the tune I always associate with him, more than “Earth Angel,” more than his favorite, “In the Still of the Night,” more than the made up songs he regaled us with at bedtime.

I’m not a huge Stones fan. I think, at best, they have one or two good songs on each album, save for Some Girls, which is kind of perfect. I have other memories of this album, ones that don’t include my father, but “Far Away Eyes” will forever be the one I associate with his happiness. As time moves on and we all get on in years and the inevitable marches toward us, we take what memories we have and hang on to them like amulets. I won’t always have my father, but I’ll always have this song, sung in my head not in Mick Jagger’s voice, but in the off-key voice of my father, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.