“Ooh Child” by The Five Stairsteps

Ooh-oo child
Things are gonna get easier
Ooh-oo child
Things’ll get brighter

In 1970, the words to the Five Stairsteps release of “Ooh Child” felt like a healing balm. My fellow college students and I had suffered numerous national wounds that needed soothing: the most recent – the May 4 shooting of unarmed Kent University students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a mass protest against the Vietnam War.

Music blared through our college dorms as we organized campus responses. Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” seemed to have prophesied the national tragedy. CSNY’s “Ohio”, released just weeks after lyricist Neil Young perused the Life Magazine photos of the massacre, commemorated the four dead.

Most of the music written in response to the country’s unrest was – like the first stage of grief – angry. That is until the tender harmony of the Five Stairsteps, a brothers and sister soul-group, took to the airwaves with a simple message of hope

Some day, yeah
We’ll put it together and we’ll get it all done
Some day
When your head is much lighter

I carried the Five Stairsteps’ one-hit wonder like an amulet through my adult good years (married and blessed with two children) and the challenging ones – which began December of 1998 when my 49-year-old husband died from a complication after surgery. Still reeling, my children, ages 13 and 11, and I joined in-laws on a Memorial Weekend campout the following spring.

Yes it was emotional, but as the
intensity of the song’s lyrics
brightened so did I and – thanks
to some gentle leading on the
groom’s part – ended with a flourish.

Quiet pervaded the campsite the hour lull after swimming, except for an oldies station playing on the radio by our tent. The girls had fallen asleep; the boys were on the bocce court; and my head nodded as I slipped back and forth between reality and reverie.

I can still remember being drawn to a tiny commotion in a pine treetop followed by a flash of red spiraling downward, until a crimson male cardinal landed by my chair. He hopped and directed his chatter toward me, shifting his head from side to side as if to emphasize a point.

Then another flash occurred – this one from the past as “Ooh Child” aired, its lyrics promising a “walk in the rays of a beautiful sun.” As the bird continued to twist its head to and fro I found myself thinking back to how Larry would always turn up the volume when the song played on the car radio, telling the kids to quiet down because it was Mom’s song.

Fast forward twenty years to last fall, as my son and his fiancée planned their wedding. With the big day approaching, I brought up the topic of the mother-groom dance, about to lobby for something easy on the feet – and heart. “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”, maybe.

“Oh I already have a song picked,” he said. “Ooh Child.”

Of course I cherished his choice but felt concerned about how I would hold up through the memories it would evoke.

At the reception, as the DJ invited my son and me to the dance floor, “Ooh Child’s” signature drum beat rolled into the oh-so-familiar brass and string intro. I melted into dance position aware of only one other person in the room. No, actually two.

To hear the Five Stairsteps perform “Ooh Child,” watch the video below. You can also read  the full lyrics here,