The soundtrack

What is it about songs that can take you right back to standing in a particular spot with a particular person at a particular moment?  Particularly old songs from an old life?

I listen to my I-Pod a lot.  (I find it helps to drown out the constant fighting and bickering between my children.)  There's a big mix of music on there, and I find my mind jumping around through the decades as I listen.  I can be brought to tears one minute (thanks to Adele).  Bouncing my head the next (oh, Jay-Z, I love you).  Twisting my hips with Shakira or Marc Anthony.  "Yell-singing" with Pink.  Or a dance session could break out with Maya and I enjoying some Black Eyed Peas.

More often than not, however, my mind is somewhere else.  My body is in my kitchen in Kansas, but throw on some 2Pac, and my mind is in the driver's seat of a Hyundai in 1994.  Driving around with a car full of guys getting into trouble and laughing all the way.  Outkast always has me back at Food Lion with my best friend in the world telling LLOONNGG stories that never seem to end.  Black Sheep take me back to junior year with two girlfriends and too much free time on our hands.  N.W.A. and Digital Underground instantly take me back to summers spent with my favorite cousin, sneaking out of tiny bathroom windows and getting stuck (only once) halfway out. 

Sidenote... if you ever get stuck halfway out of a bathroom window in the middle of the night while your Grandma is asleep in the next room, try not to laugh too loud while you wait for the boys to come and help you out the other side.  And, if you're the one not stuck, keep your laughter to a minimum or your cousin could become quite cross with you.



There are songs that take me back to my wedding.  Songs that take me forward into the unknowable but inevitable.  I travel (against my best judgement) back to a time when idiotic things made me laugh and even more idiotic things made me cry.  I am riding through the parts of town I would never take my children near.  I am holding hands with the first boy who ever broke my heart.  I am looking at my children for the first time.  I am watching him walk away through a lightly falling rain.  I am starting over again for the umpteenth time.  I am laughing hysterically at nothing in particular.  I am living.

My I-Pod is the soundtrack for all of my days.  So, when my children are busy playing outside or fighting like crazy, I can throw on a song and disappear into fifteen years ago.  Or sing at the top of my lungs while dancing with my favorite four year old.  Either way, the music guides me through the days when nothing else can.