♪♫ Oh, you ain't gettin' no younger ♪♫
My 70's music choice in Pandora was playing in the background while I loaded the dishwasher the other day. I think listening to music can be considered multi-tasking and I needed the company anyway.
Just as Desperado by the Eagles tugged on my ear, I willingly turned up the volume. I leaned up against the sink, but when I closed my eyes they filled not so willingly with unexpected tears.
That song debuted 47 years ago. I know that because I know how to count to 99 on ten fingers. I could not stop my mind from drifting through all those years, and those thoughts kept my fingers busy.
When I entered high school the World War II hits were twenty to twenty five years old. Twenty year old songs were longer than a lifetime of a teenager. I remember considering them ancient.
"The Charleston" from the "Roarin' 20's" wasn't even thirty the year I was born. One random thought reminded me that that dance was closer in years to my infant days than "Desperado" was in years to my senior days. It doesn't make sense now, but at the moment I felt it was poignant. (Meanwhile our 11-year old granddaughter 'Charlestoned' perfectly on our patio yesterday after grandpa showed it to her on an internet video.)
There was music in my house from my earliest memories. My mom listened to the radio often as she clothed and fed and cleaned and instructed. My siblings and I all played piano or other instruments. We had a little phonograph that played our limited records over and over and over. And then played them again. My older siblings added more LPs to our little collection after my parents bought a small stereo that sat near the window in our living room. There were hours of Tennessee Ernie Ford, Burl Ives, Gordon Lightfoot, The Kingston Trio; plus various instrumentals such as the Philadelphia Philharmonic, Percy Faith, and Martin Denny.
I eventually completed the dish washing task that day, but not before vaguely arranging major events and music in my head. I quickly acknowledged that they were already entwined up there in some wonderful or, in some cases, quite brutal ways.
A bit brutal in fact on that very day when those lyrics, so beautiful in 1973, reminded me in 2020 that ...... ♪♫ Oh, you ain't gettin' no younger ♪♫
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