You Never Forget Your First

I bought myself a present yesterday. I do that all the time on the rare occasion when I feel like I really deserve one. What did I do yesterday to merit a present, you ask? Well, I completed my fifth day of NaNoWriMo and that officially marked more words of fiction than I've ever put to paper before. (I know, right? Cheers! *clink*) It's weird - I'm not particularly proud of what I've written and I'm not even sure if any amount of post-November editing will make me so, but I AM very proud of the fact that I've been disciplined and dedicated enough to do it every day - even when the results weren't exactly (or even close to) what I wanted them to be.

I didn't want to talk about that, though.

I wanted to talk about my present.

I bought myself the CD 'Dreamboat Annie' by Heart. (no small thanks to Mary RC for getting that ball rolling with her post about doing their freaking hair and makeup and throwing me into possibly frightening squealy fangirl overload mode in her comments. Sorry Mary. Maybe sometime I'll tell you how I REALLY feel...) Now this was special, because this was the first album I bought with my own money. And I haven't had it in any other format until yesterday. Oh - for my younger readers - albums were these big flat round black things - bigger than a dinner plate - and we played them on record players, one side then the other. The artwork on them was sometimes amazing and often iconic. They were and are delicious. But that's not what I wanted to talk about, either.

I listened to the CD in the car yesterday and was amazed that I still knew every word to every song. The low notes she sings are still too high for me, but that didn't stop me from singing along to every note. I was alone in the car, no one's ears had to bear the offense. Oh! That was you next to me at that stop light? Well - whatever... Momma was just getting her groove on and you were probably just jealous. Love me like music, and I'll be your song...

Which brings me (quite smoothly, if I say so m'self) to the lyrics. How pretty is that one, by the way? I nearly wept this morning, listening to 'How Deep it Goes'.

Somebody turned on the dirty blues, well I know -
you don't like the blues 'cause the words are always the same
and they kind of remind you...

Somebody turned the blues on me,
well, I don't like the blues -
'cause I can't see through the tears that come,
and make it hard to find you...

Good gravy, kids. That moves me as much now as it did when I was fifteen. And that's exactly how old I felt, listening to it. I was instantly transported to my parents living room, playing albums on their hi-fi and singing every word as if it mattered. I could feel my parents carpeting under my belly as I read every lyric from the album cover and commited them to something deeper than memory. I almost expected my dad to say, "Time to call it quits, Tam, we've got to head to school"

"Just one more song..."

"I'll sing you a song - we have to go." (And for those of you who actually knew both my dad and I at that time - here's an extra little treat for you - he generally sang me Billy Joel's "Big Shot". Sometimes he danced. You're welcome for that visual)

I remember thinking the song 'Magic Man' might have been written about the boy I was seeing, because I truly HAD never seen eyes so blue... I thought about him this morning - listening to that CD - for the first time in over thirty years...

I remember hiking in the Canadian Rockies and drinking from a stream and hearing the lyric 'the time that you drank that water like wine, so sweet and so fine...' in my head and I was transported back to THAT moment this morning, too. I could almost taste that water - infinitely sweeter and more refreshing than any I'd ever tasted before or since.

My children were fighting in the car this morning and I turned up the volume on 'White Lightning and Wine' - mostly just to drown them out - and they not only stopped fighting but decided it would be a great song for their band to cover. Music hath charms...

I suppose I should get back to my NaNoWriMo project. How else am I gonna convince myself I deserve 'Seals and Croft's Greatest Hits' or Carole King's 'Tapestry' or Billy Joel's anything before 'The Nylon Curtain'?

Write on.