Ode To My Family by The Cranberries

Diana, Buffy and I are a family. We are a small family, fairly new and one of us is a little fluffy, but we are a family. We aren’t held together by blood but by what’s in our hearts. If this was all the family I had in my life, I would count myself as being blessed, but luckily for my family is much more than the three of us.

When I was child, family was my mom, dad and brother. Living together, growing up together, these three people were my world. No matter what life seemed to throw at me, they were there for me. I never imagined there would be anything else in my life that would come close to that.

Now that I’m older my family includes my immediate family, Diana’s family, and both of our extended families. Do all of these people hold the same meaning in my life as my extended family? Of course not, but they do share that feeling, comfort and warmth that can only come being a family. It’s feeling that the Cranberries describe as, “my mother, she held me, when I was out there.”

I first listened to “Ode To My Family,” after buying the Cranberries’ album No Need To Argue because I found out was the favorite band of a girl I had a crush on in high school. Did buying this album get anywhere with this girl? That would have necessitated me actually making a effort to talk to her. But this crush did bring me into the musical world of The Cranberries.

“Ode To My Family” is a reflective song that questions, “does anyone care?” while finding peace in the thoughts of family and growing up. Dolores O’Riordan’s thick Irish accent crackles with emotion as she works through feelings of frustration “you did not find me” and inner joy “unhappiness where’s when I was young.” Her voice through her careful whisper in the beginning of the songs to her pleading moans may be unfamiliar in their sound but are instantly relatable in their emotion.

It isn’t clear who Dolores is asking questions to in this song. Maybe a boyfriend who broke up with her, “But I miss you, ‘cause I liked it, when I was out there. Do you know this? Do you know you did not find me?” Maybe it’s just a reflection of feeling misunderstood by the world. Regardless there is a sense of feeling alone and desperate and after each one of these series of questions, like the warm summer breeze, the chorus reflects on what it was like to be young and part of a family. Her mother held her and her father liked her. Even though these things seem simple through the perspective of a child, being held and feeling like means the world.

When things would get tough in my world I used to find comfort in the memories of being home with my mother, father and brother. Even though there will always be a special place in my heart for my immediate family, I now find that same solace in many place: a house in Indiana with Diana’s extended family, playing scrabble with my in-laws and brother in-laws and cooking with my wife, while Buffy fights her reflection in the dishwasher.