The title "Jessica's Song" goes way back to a vague concept I had in the early eighties to write a song cycle similar to Schubert's "Die Schone Mullerin" or "Winterreise", but from a female perspective. I abandoned the idea after unsuccessfully trying to come up with any meaningful ideas.
Some years later, when my brother was in drug and alcohol rehab, I attended a few Alanon meetings. The stories I heard there inspired me to come back to the "Jessica's Song" concept, only this time the protagonist would be a little girl in an alcoholic household.
I wrote the poems for the cycle as well as the music. While writing the poetry, I took care to remember that this was the viewpoint of a child who does not have the cognitive abilities of an adult, and therefore has difficulty grasping the situation. There is no mention of alcohol in the poems; a young child is unlikely to draw a connection between alcohol abuse and the inevitable domestic problems it causes. Also, it is never said whether the mother, the father, or both, are alcoholics. To the child, it doesn't matter. Both parents will be spending so much energy fighting the alcoholism that there is little left for her.
There are a number of recurring themes in this song cycle: