Time machine

 

Sometimes music becomes a time machine for me. 

I never hear songs like Yankee Doodle or The Big Rock Candy Mountain without remembering my crib and nap time. Memories of a very large house with huge double doors and lots of windows and my mother playing little plastic yellow records to try to get me to sleep. 

Later came Arthur Godfrey on the radio and songs like Que Sera Sera, or The Wayward Wind. Music from Champaign, Illinois that I heard on my mother's radio as we ironed together in the kitchen. Me on my tiny ironing board ironing Daddy's handkerchiefs at three and four.

Then there are the old folk songs like Swanee River, or my Old Kentucky home that cause pictures of a music room with a grand piano on a platform upfront of rows of wooden chairs lined up for my elementary music class with Miss Gewee. I was fascinated by her gadget that held five pieces of chalk for drawing staffs on the blackboard.

The lonely years when I was a twelve year old playing old records I inherited from my grandpop's new wife. Songs like The Green Door that  I played over and over while writing for long hours in my upstairs bedroom.

Brief memories of wanting to be a nun because of a sister who played guitar for Candys stripers intrigued me with her Blowing in the Wind at the Franciscan convent.

And again my freshman year of college going to folk masses where Blowing in the Wind figured heavily into my life as I searched for meaning and belonging.

The Green leaves of summer still creates a longing I had while pregnant, a desire to be loved completely that was never quite felt.

Later I would be seduced by many of John Denver's songs that held over even as I played them for my own children on vacations in and around the mountains and lakes of our vacations.

And memories of my father brought on by Placido Domingo and John Denver singing Perhaps Love led directly into my love affair with Pavarotti that endured for years.

Louis Armstrong's Beautiful  World ties me to my young grandson and the times we spent together while he was less than five. It is still one of my very favorites.