I still have a CD player and my kids love to pick out old CDs and listen to them. My 9 year old is probably the worlds youngest Eve 6 fanatic. We all love The Refreshments and Frank Turner. It takes the right day for Meatloaf. From the time they were each babies, I always made mix tapes and compilations for them.
I love mix tapes. Yes they are still CDs and I still have a CD player in my car. Perhaps it is my affinity for High Fidelity but music and mix tapes are important to me. I make them for people important to me. Each year I try to make a road trip cd for my kids yearly family trips. I make them to deal with my regular emotional roller coasters too.
Because of this there are plenty of homemade CDs in the car cd visor holder (95 represent!) and some of them are favorites of my children. The other day, my son grabbed a cd and passed it up to me in the front. I always have veto power and usually I would have veto'd this cd. Yet for some reason, this time I decided to put it in.
The spring and summer of 2010 was not a good time for me. The roller coaster went off the rails. I lost my job. I lost my significant other. I had to move back to my parents house. My entire house of cards life came tumbling down. At some point that summer either while wallowing or trying to recover, I created a mix tape and simply titled it "broken"
As the first track began, I started to regret putting it in. Some sensations, smells, songs hold too much memory for me and I can't handle them. I haven't been able to listen to a certain song by the Wallflowers since 2000. I have literally walked out of stores once I heard those familiar first cords. So I worried that maybe this cd would bring too much of that summer, of that period of broken back. And for a second it did.
I skipped the first song at my son's request, and I was just about to push the eject button when something unexpected happened. As Dee Clark began to lament the Raindrops falling from his eyes. I heard my son softly singing along.
It's weird that I know every word to a song from 1961 and there is no reason my son should know it. But then it hit me, all those car rides that summer. All those trips to the children's museum. The songs played and I sang along. Suddenly I remembered the joy of those moments. The pieces of that time that weren't broken.
Together we sang through the sappy silly song. We sang together a snippet from Dr Horrible. We laughed. Something that had seemed broken wasn't.
We picked up my daughter and all three of us sang through Dr Horrible again. Instead of the pain and memories that these songs used to hold, it was fun.
We even made it through the song of that summer that I used to sing scream as I drove around my broken world: "Nothing Ever hurt like You" All three of us singing loudly and smiling and jiving along. A song that I didn't think I could ever sing with a smile. I was beaming.
Something happened to those songs over the past 5 years. They didn't stay the static cauldrons of pain. It didn't hurt like it used to. Time, patience and growth combined with knowledge to change them and me. It was an excellent reminder.
The song doesn't remain the same.
And that's ok.
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