I breathe, therefore I blog.

I get sentimental each time I hear an advertisement for the Iron Man movie. I’m afraid the commercials will mar my memories of the song, but Cameron assures me that Ozzy sold out long ago, so there’s no need to get sad. He doesn’t know why the silly song is a heart song for me.

I have a sweet, clear memory of a three-year-old Cameron singing “Iron Man” from his carseat in the back of my car. He declared it his favorite song, and I wondered whose job it was to teach this child that “Itsy Bitsy Spider” was a more appropriate song for a three-year old to be singing. With a rocker as a daddy, metal trumped nursery rhymes in my nephew’s house, and it made me love his brilliant little brain just a little bit more. He would squish up his forehead and declare that country music “hurt his ears very bad,” and when I would ask him what he wanted to sing—I was hoping for “Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee”—he would shout, “Purple Haze!”

My sweet little nephew is now nine. I still love to hear him mumbling rock lyrics because it reminds me of his barely audible voice in the backseat of my car. That little voice belonged to the one who taught me so much about love.