Thankful Thursday

This morning my husband and I cruised into work in the new baby wagon, blasting tunes out the open windows. It was a great ride, even though dark clouds were hanging, heavy with rain, in the sky above us. Some mornings are just wonderful for no apparent reason, but I believe that this morning was especially great due to the new cd I had playing in the cd player.

So, today I am thankful for music and music makers.

Music has been an important part of my life ever since I was a child. Everyday in our house was music day, with the radio or record player blasting an assortment of musicians. I remember listening to James Taylor and making up dances with my sister. Our best dance was to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (this link is to Gene Pittney's version - also an amazing musician). During the dance, Sarah would stand at one end of the bed and I would stand at the other. When James Taylor sang, "The man who shot Liberty Valance, he shot Liberty Valance, he was the greatest of them all," Sarah would point her finger at me and "pull the trigger," while I fell face-first into the mattress.

Other times, when the radio wasn't playing, my father would sing and play his guitar for us. My personal favorites were The Oreo Cookie Blues by Lonnie Mack or The Martian Boogie by Brownsville Station. I loved those moments when I saw him doing the one thing he truly loved. I was always amazed at how his fingers would fly across the neck of the guitar and he would belt out blues lyrics in his deep voice. I always felt extra special when he sang for me; as if that moment in time was ours and ours alone.

As a pre-teen, I discovered music that my parents didn't listen to. I plastered my walls with New Kids on the Block posters. I even had a life-sized version that I secretly used to plant kisses on Joey McIntyre (whom I planned to marry). I would roller skate my booty off at the skating rink each Friday evening to You Got the Right Stuff and dream of a boy that would sing a song like Please Don't Go Girl to me. Oh, I loved the New Kids on the Block, almost as much as I loved Bryan Adams.

Sarah still talks about how much she worried about me in the Bryan Adams "Dark Days." In those days, I would lie in bed at night and cry to his music. Today, I'm not exactly sure why I was moved to tears. I only vaguely remember that I related the Bryan Adams song Everything I Do to a short-lived summer romance I had in the 6th grade with a boy whose name I can no longer remember. I do remember that boy gave me a gold plated ring with a blue glass stone that I lost at the park, and that I received exactly 3 letters from him after summer was over.

My teenage years were filled with 80s and 90s classics. I did a lot of lying in bed weeping then as well. Life wasn't fair, I hated my parents, I hated my friends, I hated my body and my clothes and my teeth, and I cried about all of it. If I wasn't weeping, I was smoking or drinking something in my tiny, windowless room with one bare, tiny red bulb burning through the darkness. No matter what my mood, music was always blasting on my stereo. My life-sized posters had changed from New Kids on the Block to one of Kurt Cobain and another of Morrissey. I no longer kissed them, but I dreamed of a moody, angst-filled boyfriend who would drown his sadness in my love. Mazzy Star's Fade Into You played over and over on my cd player, as did anything by The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, The Smiths and David Bowie.

When I moved from Missouri to Oklahoma, I took a job at Pizza Hut. While I hated the job, I loved closing in the evenings. During closing, we would shove a bundle of quarters in the juke box and repeatedly listen to Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee as we filled parmesan cheese containers, wiped down tables, vacuumed and polished the copious amounts of brass in the restaurant. At home I listened to Alice in Chains , Primus, Bad Religion, and the Misfits with my musician, angst-filled, poet boyfriend. We fought a lot. Once while Type O Negative was playing I threw a lamp at his head, barely missing him. We ended our relationship 3 years later, and I moved back to Missouri to begin college.

In college I was introduced to the collegiate catalogue which included bands like Dave Matthews, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, and Modest Mouse. I listened to the Counting Crows every day while walking through campus. I felt so adult and urban and hip. For the first time in my life I lived alone in a small apartment off-campus, and I didn't have to account for my whereabouts to anyone. I went to parties and had flings and refused to get emotionally involved with boys. I was independent, damn it, didn't my stack of Indigo Girls cds prove it? I forsook all real relationships. That is, until I met my husband at a Delta Chi fraternity party.

As Jyoti walked up to me in the smoke-filled room, The Violent Femmes were playing on the radio. I remember he had a beer in a red cup and that he looked very handsome in his black leather jacket. I think I may have been in love right then. We still argue about who kissed whom first, but I do know that when our lips met, we were standing outside in the cold next to an evergreen bush, and the music of Cake was wafting through the air. I went home and listened to Cake for the rest of the night.

Now, we are married and Sundays at our house are music day. Rather than watching t.v. I put on my Ipod and play random songs as loud as my stereo can go. I'm in a new phase in my life and with this new phase, comes new music. In ten years I will look back and remember the times before I had children when I listened to Regina Specktor, Ingrid Michaelson, Joe Purdy and Amos Lee. They are all musicians I have found on television commercials. I have the feeling I'm going to miss television when I have a baby, but I'll always have music.