I was a young adult of the 70's. As I creep closer and closer to that Social Security benefit I can shortly begin to collect, I find my taste in music regresses back to those days rather than progressing.
Oh, don't get me wrong, my 16 year-old granddaughter can still get in my car and turn her whatever-it-is on at top volume, and I am amused at how the circle of life goes on - even though I can't believe what these folks are putting out there through their music these days. I just hearken back to the days of cruising Broadway, usually in my mom's car - my bestie's mom was not as lenient - and murdering the harmony on "Old Fashioned Love Song" by Three Dog Night.
As I age, and as I reconsider the last 2 years - this one included - as probably among the most hideous of my life, I find I'm becoming quite introspective when I can keep the lid on my emotions. When I want to escape, totally escape, it's on with the ear buds/listening device and under a blanket to shut it all out for a while.
And so it is today as I sit here on a Monday night - can't be evening any more, it's pushing midnight - except that I've got the urge to sort it all out on paper as I listen to my more mellow musical choices. I have had the overwhelming drive to write all day today, and am just getting around to it.
Music has been a strong memory of mine since childhood. I spent the preschool years listening to my mother rattle the windows with recordings of Glenn Miller's Orchestra, the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the Mills Brothers while my father worked each day. I can weave strands of my past through all kinds of music. Having an elder sister, I heard a lot of Ricky Nelson and the Everly Brothers wafting down the hallway between bedrooms as I lay in bed playing make-believe rather than going to sleep at night. Of course I was a huge Beatles' fan - and remain so - but veered back into all-American pop as the 60's ended. Those Beatles were just a bunch of dope heads, right?
In the darkness of my high school years, I found a silent voice of my own in Simon and Garfunkel; "I am a Rock" and "The Sounds of Silence" played on my stereo every night in my room. Others clawed for and got my affection, too: George and Ira Gershwin's standards, varying Broadway show tunes of the time, and a love of Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Debussy that became the foundation of an ever-broadening base of melodies and lyrics to fill my mind and my soul.
I remember at 17 being interviewed for a news article on some students from different high schools. Hideously private and tightly wound back then, I paced the floor like a lunatic as I listened to my mother in her telephone portion of the interview spew my soul-deep joys in life: "all kinds of music," the writer summarized because I know I interjected and told my mother to just quit laying me out on a plate. I was misfit enough at school; I didn't need folks to know my musical tastes or that my father had given me a basic art appreciation education at the Art Institute of Chicago that has perpetuated and is a cherished part of my soul even today. Leave me and Ludwig alone, please!
All that was so long ago - and yet certain musical pieces can still shake me to the core with the memories they invoke. I state it that way because I have worked mightily to develop and try to understand who and what I am since those days. I brushed it off at the time and would amend the statement slightly today, but I was once told that I would always have the ability to pull myself up by my own bootstraps; I am a survivor who has to metamorphose myself to deal with each hammer blow life throws at me.
I will be the first to say that I have only been able to do this by the grace of God and with the loving support of my husband and special friends. I can give emphatic testimony to the adage that some people come into your life for a reason and some for a season; I'm still learning to become comfortable with the fact that there are those you love who just stop loving you back, and you don't always get the closure you may want or need.
I don't mean to give the idea that I'm brazen and callous about different relationships or life events. I know how it feels to be shunned and if I get the right music on the earbuds I'll cry all day. But then I'm playing the IF game, and that's got to be a non-starter in my world. I also am totally capable of standing up and accepting responsibility for something I've done wrong, but dammit, tell me what it is, don't just punish me with no explanation.
This last sentence sets my mind whirling like a top. I have been blessed with a bright mind and good organizational skills; I am not a member of the pack but rather a leader. Yet a couple of the most hurtful things that I've ever encountered had to do with something I obviously am doing wrong when I begin to spread my wings and fly in a leadership position. The deep wounds eventually heal and scab over and I venture out of my cocoon softly, tentatively, knowing I have a lot to give to make things better for others. But then the responses come that although I am tremendously qualified for the volunteer position I am seeking - let alone employment - the earth has shifted on it's fifth axis because of global warming and they'll call me back sometime after the apocalypse. Scab is now ripped open again and blood needs to be staunched from the fresh tear.
So I sit here at midnight when I should turn off the Christmas tree and go to bed. Toni Braxton sings "Unbreak My Heart," and although my story is not the same unrequited love as what she vocalizes, it still evocative of my raw emotions.
Psalm 139 says we were woven in our mothers' wombs by God's hands (paraphrase). He knows our every thought, every deed, before we do. I marvel more each day at His Omniscience and Omnipresence. I'm curious as to what the Holy Spirit is molding me to be, moreso as I age. I know it sounds flip, but if I get an opportunity to ask a question of God face-to-face someday it will be along the lines of can You please explain all this? Can You show me why things have been the way they were, why they are the way they are and what this lifespan bound together in my ears and heart by lyrics and instruments was all about?
Just asking..............
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