LAST Words Sing Your Way Through Life

My earliest recollection of loving music was in the late 60’s sitting with my mom in her sewing room while she mended and created clothing for six children. She had a stack of albums that ranged from the Big Band era to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and I was there for all of it. While playing in her round, cookie tin with poinsettias on top that had been converted into a button box full of cast-offs and extras, she would make me close my eyes and listen to the spinning album and tell her what my mind’s eye saw within the music. These lessons were invaluable and instilled in me a passion for music that I still enjoy today.

Being the baby, I grew up with brothers and sisters that also had a love of music, but my big brothers were considered bad musical influences. My oldest brother, according to my mom, had questionable taste, and I was forbidden to listen to his albums. It seems there was an incident when I was 5 years-old and was caught singing at the top of my lungs Jim Morrison’s “Come on Baby Light My Fire.” I’ll never forget my mother’s look of shock as she asked me if I even knew what the words meant. She proclaimed they were highly inappropriate, that I was never to sing that song again and wasn’t to step foot in my brother’s room until I was much older. It certainly did not stop me.

I grew into loving musicals (Oliver!, The Sound of Music, Music Man, Cabaret, etc.) and had the albums to every one of them that I played on repeat. But it is important to note that my passion grew so deep that I could also, and still can, sing every jingle from every commercial and television show during my formative years. I cannot tell you about a conversation that I had with my husband yesterday, but I can sing every word of the Fig Newton and Lowenbrau beer jingle from the 70’s.

I wrote my first and only fan letter to Sonny and Cher. I was obsessed with their variety show and was devastated when they divorced; I took it personally, and I put pen to paper, begging them to please stay together, for my sake and for the sake of their daughter. They never responded. I spent hours becoming Cher in the privacy of my pre-teen bedroom complete with lime green shag carpet and orange floral wallpaper. I would pull a shirt partially off my head and allow it to hang down like long hair, I fashioned ridiculously long fingernails out of Scotch tape colored with Bic Banana markers, and I used my sister’s round hairbrush as a microphone. When I tell you that I was Cher, I mean it; the likeness was simply uncanny.

My teenage years brought so much angst and drama and, as a result, my musical taste changed as often as my mood. I was just as much into sobbing over a stupid boy while listening to Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love” and willing the telephone to ring as I was attempting self-imposed whiplash while rocking out to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” in my neon pink blazer with shoulder pads that rivaled a football player’s. I see that shoulder pads are back, by the way, and ladies…for the love of all that is holy, just don’t unless you are going to include Aqua Net in the mix.

My twenties brought in the age of the mixed tape, which was better than any store-bought present or Valentine considering the hours they took to make. You knew if someone handed you a cassette tape with a handwritten insert of the contents AND gave the compilation a title specific to you, that you were loved. “Ann’s Birthday Tape”, a compilation of songs including those by The Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan was carefully curated for me in an attempt to win my heart even though it wasn’t actually my birthday or even close to it. This was a personal symbol of love, a reminder of all the songs we sang together while riding in his truck, and that tape and those songs sealed the deal for me. I still love it and you, husband.

Music remains a large part of our life. Karl carefully nurtured a Grateful Dead buddy in our oldest daughter (thank God because it got me off the hook!), and our twins have the uncanny ability to sing just about anything from a Disney movie and can sing the entire score of The Greatest Showman and Burlesque. All 3 grew up participating in many sing-a-longs in the car, and I will never, ever, hear “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac without thinking of my girls.

My favorite part of listening to good music is dancing with reckless abandon, like I’m invisible. A few years ago, the husband and I had one of the best times we’ve ever had at a Wood Brothers concert in Savannah. We danced and sang so hard to “One More Day” that we were drenched in sweat and walked to our hotel on a high. Second best was when we visited Red Rocks in Colorado and, holding hands, we both cried to The Avett Brother’s closing song, “I Have No Enemies” and subsequently decided we want that song played at our funerals… and that is the power of song.

I recently read that with the right music you either forget everything or you remember everything. I have thousands of songs that are the soundtrack of my life –I can literally smell my brother’s Dodge Magnum that wreaked of stinky feet and Marlboro cigarettes every time I hear “Gimme Three Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and that is one memory I hope I never lose. Enjoy yourself some tunes, people. Sing loud, dance hard, and embarrass your family – you’ll live longer, I swear. And if you pass me on the road and see me singing, hear music coming all the way through my rolled-up windows, and notice that I’m wearing Scotch tape fingernails, mind your business because I’m living my best life.