Three Is a Magic Number

Dear Kids,

My beautiful darlings before you ever heard this song, I did.

And while I don’t know when exactly I heard Three Is a Magic Number first…

I remember I was a kid myself, sitting at the Shannons house.

The Shannons.

Somewhere between the sound of laughter in a house that wasn’t mine, but felt like home.

Between the flicker of a well-loved VHS, rewound until the tape ran soft.

Between the slow, golden stretch of afternoons where time moved like honey—thick, warm, endless.

Where the air smelled like old books and something sweet.

Where a song like this could slip into the background,

catching in the walls, in the corners, in me—before I even knew to hold onto it.

Back then, it was just a song.

A simple tune, a lesson set to melody.

But the thing about music, about places that shape you, is that they don’t really leave.

And years later, when I heard it again, I realized it had never left at all.

Carl’s House.

A video rental from Blockbuster.

A bowl of popcorn between us, Jessie and I stretched across the floor, pressing play on Never Been Kissed.

I loved movies.

I liked getting lost in stories, in characters, in soundtracks that felt like they carried pieces of something bigger.

I don’t remember the exact moment it happened, but somewhere between Drew Barrymore’s awkward charm and the soft glow of the TV screen,

a song I knew by heart came floating through the speakers.

Three Is a Magic Number.

Only it wasn’t the version I grew up with.

It wasn’t a cartoon bouncing across a classroom monitor or childhood friends T.V.

It was Blind Melon.

It stopped me in my tracks, even as I lay there on the floor,

even as the movie kept playing.

It was like someone had taken my childhood, stretched it out, pulled it through the radio, spun it into something new—not erased, not replaced, but grown.

At twelve, maybe thirteen, I was right at the threshold.

Old enough to start curating my own taste, young enough for nostalgia to still hit like a wave.

I was just starting to understand music not as background noise,

but as something personal, something alive.

I was shifting from Disney soundtracks and pop radio to a world that felt bigger—alternative, grunge, indie, songs with layers, meaning, emotion.

And then, here was this song.

This simple, familiar melody, a bridge between the past and the future, between childhood and whatever came next.

Blind Melon was cool.

Schoolhouse Rock was my childhood.

Hearing them together felt like a secret handshake, like proof that my past and present weren’t separate things, but part of the same orbit.

I burned it onto a mix CD soon after!

Not just because I liked it, but because it had grown with me.

And maybe that’s what music does.

It lingers, it evolves, it shifts its shape to fit the moment.

It becomes part of you, waiting in the background, until suddenly, it steps forward and says: I’ve been here all along.

Pregnant with You.

By then, music wasn’t just something I loved.

It was something I trusted.

Something I leaned on.

So when I found out I was pregnant, I did what felt natural—

I played music for you.

Headphones pressed against my belly, a quiet world waiting to hear its first song.

I liked to imagine the sound waves floating through, wrapping around you like a melody before you even had a name.

I played you Bill Nye the Science Guy episodes and so much Schoolhouse Rock, the same songs that had once filled my childhood.

The same songs that had lived inside the hum of a VHS player, in the laughter of afternoons at the Shannons’ house, in the flicker of a rented movie at Carl’s.

And when I played Three Is a Magic Number, I played both versions.

The one I had grown up with, and the one that had grown with me.

Maybe you heard it.

Maybe you felt it.

Maybe, even then, the music started shaping you, the way it had shaped me.

Now.

Now, there are three of you.

Three little voices filling the house.

Three sets of feet stomping across the floor.

Three pairs of hands clapping, dancing, reaching for the sky.

You don’t just listen to Three Is a Magic Number.

You live it.

You love it.

You sing it at the top of your lungs, jumping, laughing in the glow of the TV screen.

The old Schoolhouse Rock songs I played for you in the womb—they’re still here.

Only now, they echo through the living room, through the halls, through the walls.

Our old DVDs, scratched from love, get pulled out over and over again.

Yesterday, I stood in the doorway, watching the three of you—

singing a song I once sang.

And in that moment, I saw it all.

The Shannons’ living room.

The VHS tapes.

Carl’s house. Jessie and me on the floor.

A mix CD, burned in a teenage bedroom.

Headphones on my belly.

A family of two, becoming three.

And now—three becoming everything.

Three was always a magic number.

But I never knew just how much

until now.

Love,

Mom

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