You know, I'm usually a pretty emotional guy when it comes to music, but that song never hit me the way it usually it's other people. And you would think that you would hit me even harder, considering that I lost my father to cancer at 21 and he was diagnosed right before high school -- so he had cancer for more than 1/3 of my life and definitely more than 1/2 of my memories.

I still love my dad very much, but I don't quite understand why this song doesn't make me cry the way that some other songs do.

I am in no way a mama's boy, and if anything I was a daddy's boy growing up, since mom was usually the strict one and dad was always the fun one. But that lame country song by LeeAnn Womack "I hope you dance" makes me cry every now and then -- it made me absolutely we the first time I heard it (obligatory comment about how country music isn't my thing).

The song itself evokes emotion, but what really hit me was that one day I was just cleaning out my moms car for her and I found that she owned a CD single of that song, and it's literally the only CD that she owns. And that song is written from a mother's point of view.

I don't think the song itself would have made me cry, but it's the context that made me cry, the fact that my mom loves me and my brother so much that she really identifies with that song. Like I said, my mother doesn't own any music other than that one song. so, you can infer that she really identifies with the lyrics of that song, and if you start to think about the lyrics you start to realize how much that mother really cares for her children, knowing that it is a "big and scary world out there" but there is also so much good out there to experience, and my mother just hopes that me and my brother have the best lives that we can live.
here is a link to the song, and I can't help but think about my mother thinking about me and my brother when I listen to it.

TLDR -- "cats in the cradle" never really did anything for me. "I hope you dance, definitely brings on the water works at times.