Grateful for music....

I love technology.  I know people say it’s a curse, double edged sword and all that jazz but I am a technology junkie.  I am especially grateful for my IPOD.  I was in the car for 6 ½ hours yesterday and with my IPOD as my companion the hours flew.  I didn’t have to listen to the same song twice, there were no commercials, no channel flipping, no songs I didn’t like-it was bliss!  I remember taking trips as a family when I was a child.  They were never long trips, usually just to visit one of my Aunts, but the 5 of us in a sedan with no air conditioning and only the radio with my father in control of the channels- oy vey!  One trip in particular stood out.  My sister got my dad to put on “normal” music and she was singing along and my brother burst out laughing and said to her “Please, Deb!  Stop singing, you couldn’t carry a tune if it had a handle!”  I was sitting in between them, on the dreaded hump in the back seat.  I cracked up laughing and then felt bad a few seconds later---how mean!  But dear God, so true!  I love my sister like no other, but the girl can’t sing—what I would have given for an IPOD or a Walkman or even just earplugs back then!

           My kids have always been good on car trips.  Hell, we drove across the country when Emily was almost a year old and it was cake.  We are not big on talking in the car on long trips.  We all pretty much settle in with our respective IPods’ or video games (not me, clearly I’m driving, remember lol) and have a quiet, contented ride.  Yesterday I felt such a range of emotions.  Those songs transported me to so many different times in my life.  The words and melodies brought memories of different people and my mind was flooded with all kinds of feelings.  I sang happily along with Katy Perry, Pink, and Lady Gaga.  I was reminded of my sister when “Beach Baby” came on and reminded of how we used to sing along with the Carpenters in her blue dodge swinger when “Top of the World” came on.  Boz Scaggs and Billy Joel remind me of the summer of 1980 spent in my brother’s truck driving all over Long Island.  Erasure conjures up memories of driving around in my friend Kim’s black Jetta on our lunch hour in the early 90s.  I cried when “Right Here” by Miley Cyrus came on, reminded of my niece Jessie when she left after a visit and told Danny that was their song.  “The Nearness of You” will always make me think of my parents dancing cheek to cheek at whatever wedding or party we would be at and my dad would request that song for my mother.  “Club Can’t Handle me”---my niece Katey’s sweet 16 party, lighting her candle and driving Danny to baseball-he had to listen to that song before every game!  “Babe” “Greased Lightening” “After the Loving”, -my first love. 

           Music has the ability to invoke so many emotions in me.  Yesterday, I felt the full spectrum of emotions during the day.  My IPOD certainly helped that along.  I remembered singing to my babies when they were little, I was brought back to heartbreaks I’ve had through my life, happy times dancing in the kitchen with the boys when they were little-which made me laugh and cry.  I’ll never forget when I realized that music had a huge impact on me emotionally.  I took a quiz that was about your senses and what soothes you.  I never realized that sounds and smells were so effective at soothing my soul.  How sad is that, that I was so removed from what made ME happy that I needed a quiz to make me realize that lighting a candle and playing certain music could put me in a happy place almost instantly.  And luckily, with my IPOD on hand, I have 1200 hand selected songs that can take me wherever I want to go.