With Each Moment Comes a Soundtrack...All Our Own

This week, my 17 year-old brought up a topic, a memory of a first. He told me that when he finally rode alone in his car for the first time a song came on the radio, Jason Derulo's Ridin' Solo. At that moment, I knew exactly those feelings and how independent a teen feels behind the wheel, actually ridin' solo...for the very first time. If I could bottle that feeling for him...I'd do just that.

My car, that daddy bought for me, sat in our garage for 2 months before my 16th birthday. I used to just go out there and sit in it, anticipating the day that I would be behind the wheel. When the day arrived, and I passed my driving test, I left Cardinal Heights heading to Tattersall Estates, 315 Kelso Trail. It was a driveway I pulled in that day and countless other days after that. My song that day in June on my way to pick her up was Bella Donna by Stevie Nicks. I've never asked her, but I think she was just as ecstatic that day as I was. We had no idea the miles we'd travel and memories we would make in that red car. If I could bottle that feeling for she and I...I'd do just that.

When I was in high school, our football team was anticipating and leaving school that day to compete for the Class AA Championship at Cardinal Stadium in Louisville, KY. I was a Junior in the fall of 1990. The day our team was leaving, our school secretary played a song between each class period, Survivor's, Eye of the Tiger. Now, every time I hear even the beginning of that song...I think of that day at OUR school. I remember how euphoric it was and how excited we were in hopes that the Corbin Redhounds would win it all at state. We didn't, but that's not the point. The secretary, who retired from my Alma mater years ago...passed away this year. After learning of her death, I thought of that day in 1990, that song and her. I saw her face, her smile...even remembered her voice, and how she had played that song on that day for all of us. Funny, the things we recall.

I remember my exact locale on the day I heard, "We the jury...find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder". I was driving northbound on I-75, between Frankfort and Louisville... mortified and shocked. The station I was listening to, played the song, Independence Day by Martina McBride right after the news release. To this day, each time I hear it, I am taken back to that very day. This, the first time in my young adult life that I realized that justice was not always swift nor did it always prevail. Little did I know, that those two words, "not guilty"...would instantaneously divide an entire nation.

When I was 22 years old, my maternal grandmother was losing her battle with cancer. The afternoon I was called "home" to Louisville to be with her, I raced to be at her side commuting from Corbin. The song, When You're Gone by The Cranberries played as I veered onto the interstate from Exit 29. Now, that song and each time I hear it takes me back to that place and time in my life and how my heart was broken. But since, that song has became a fitting tribute to the matriarch that I adored and who blessed my life for 22 years, and continues to...even in death. What a heroine..and she was mine.

Indeed, musical stamps permanently leave imprints that are never seen, only and always felt...whether triumphant or tragic, that's where they remain. The songs that are symbolic to specific times in each of our lives, milestones, memory triggers...sometimes whether we want them to resurface or not they show themselves. I purposely left out any clips or pictures in today's blog...you each have a soundtrack all your own.