Country Music Reclamation Project: Someday We’ll Look Back

I get my love for country music from my Dad. I can remember him on one knee in front of the endtable/stereo, intently listening to his Johnny Cash singles, memorizing the words so he could sing them around the house. He was always singing, and despite having an ordinary voice, was never shy about it. As embarrassing as it was when I was a teenager, it was endearing when we were both much older. We definitely bonded over my rediscovery of country music, and a lot of records I brought him as an adult reawakened the love for this honest and literate music.

In his final years, after my Mom passed away, he sang a lot to fill the silence of his empty home, and his song choices tended to be older and sadder. After I made him a CD of Merle Haggard songs, he focused on one song, so typical of Merle’s songwriting, a sentimental ballad about surviving a lifetime of hardship and only at the end, looking back at what had turned out to be a good life.

Someday We’ll Look Back (performed by Merle Haggard)
Written by Merle Haggard

Someday when our dream world finds us
And these hard times are gone
We’ll laugh and count our blessings
In a mansion all our own
If we both pull together, tomorrow’s sure to come
Someday we’ll look back and say it was fun

We lived on love and pennies
And a daydream out of sight
And I’m amazed at the way you smile
When things don’t turn out right
We climbed each hill together, each step one by one
And someday we’ll look back and say it was fun

Someday when our dream world finds us
And these hard times are gone
We’ll laugh and count our blessings
In a mansion all our own
If we both pull together, tomorrow’s sure to come
Someday we’ll look back and say it was fun
And someday we’ll look back and say it was fun

My Dad worried in his final years if he’d done enough for my Mom to deserve her. He’d often ask me — a total failure when it comes to women — “What did she see in me?” The key lyric to him seemed to be “I’m amazed at the way you smile when things don’t turn out right.” And although they often didn’t, in the end everything worked out. There was no doubt that they had succeeded as a team. They had three devoted children, a handful of grandchildren and a herd of great-grandchildren, along with a home and a lifetime of memories. No one remembered the doubts they had and the mistakes they made, but my Dad did, and when he sang the final line of the song, it wasn’t boastful and it wasn’t funny. He seemed relieved, and a little bit surprised.