Songs that make me cry, Christmas edition: “All That I Want”

The family holiday video opens with a 3-year-old boy fetching his stuffed monkey from his bed. As Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas” kicks in, he walks to his parents’ bedroom, climbs onto their bed with the monkey, and dances erratically but happily while Dad watches with detached amusement. Then the music shifts to The Weepies’ “All That I Want” and the visuals switch to a photo montage: Mom at the summit of a hike, the boy riding his tricycle, Dad running a race…

To anyone outside this family’s social circle, the video would be uninteresting — just one example (among millions) of the content that amateur YouTubers made with others’ music in the years before TikTok. I was really proud of it, though, especially the matching of the photos to the music. As the somber little bridge (“And when the night is falling…”) resolves into the warm little chorus, the serious facial expressions resolve into joy: Dad beaming after winning his race; the boy beaming at his homemade birthday cake; Mom and Dad both smiling as they sit on the couch with the boy wedged between them….

This is all that I want, stated the Weepies on my behalf. You’re all that I want.

The video is a time capsule of a happy time — or at least a time with plenty of happy moments. But less than two years later, my marriage would fail. The family that I had declared to be “all that I want” would cease to exist.

In the years since, I’ve wondered about the meaning of this tender, earnest video.

Was it a product of self-delusion? Was I ignoring signs that our family was headed for trouble?

Perhaps — but the feelings expressed in the video were real at the time. They were valid. You feel what you feel, right? And when feelings change, that doesn’t mean the old feelings were “wrong”; they just aren’t up-to-date any more. They belong to a time and place other than here and now.

These days, when I listen to “All That I Want,” I recall that The Weepies were a duo, Deb Talan and Steve Tannen, who got married early in their career, had three children together, and eventually got divorced. I think about their arc, how it intersected with mine in 2009, how my sense of family security would dissolve shortly thereafter, and how, in time, a wonderful new family would arise from the ashes of my old one.