If you’re like me, music can bring back such vivid memories of past times, both good and bad. I remember the song I was listening to just after my Asti Girl (Yorkie) died, over 20 years ago, and I cry listening to it every holiday season when I’m putting up the tree (Pachelbel’s Canon in D). It’s like a little self-torture I know, but it’s the only way I know how to start my holiday and get the tree up. Without it, it seems like my hoilday is just incomplete. In other words, it’s a thing.

I remember the song I was listening to just after finding out that I passed the bar, dancing along in the home office with my Sweetie, celebrating the culmination of four long ass years of hard work (Celebration by Kool & The Gang, of course). I remember crying all the way home from Little Rock when I found out the house we were living in was being sold, as it crushed the spirit of the person I was with at the time, and it was an end to a long long autumn full of worry and pain (Home Sweet Home, Motley Crue). There is the song that I listened to before every single ballgame when I was a majorette; it was my get up and get after it song. I also listened to it just before walking into the bar exam spot and before some finals in law school (Summer of ’69, Bryan Adams). There is also the song I recall from my first school dance, dancing with my cast on my arm, with my best friend and former 5th grade boyfriend. (Madonna’s Crazy for You, appropriately). The one that friends and I tried to make hand signals to go along with (Jenny Jenny “867-5309), and yes, we might have even tried to prank call the number. It was the 80s. Caller ID was but a futuristic dream, thankfully. (Sorry Ms. Ferguson – it was us.) There are just so many, and so many of them take me instantly back to that time and place, with memories so incredibly intense that they bring tears to my eyes or a smile to my face, or both.

There are the concerts I have attended – so many over the years with so many friends. Some bands we have seen two or three times they were that good. REO, Styx, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Morris Day and the Time (yes, seriously), Bryan Adams, Paul McCartney, and the formidable Tom Petty on his 2014 and 2017 tours. He will be forever missed in my household, not just because he was fabulous, but because of how much my Sweetie looked like him back in the day, as well as now. Even the smile and sunglasses are the same. Those times gel in my mind – from crying at Home Sweet Home as it was played live to the inspirational statements made by Stevie Nicks on their last tour stop through Little Rock. Powerful women inspire me.

Amazon’s Alexa with Amazon’s streaming music service has opened up a whole new era of musical enjoyment for me and my household. We can literally ask her to play just about any song we can think of, and *boom* it’s blaring as loud as we want. Some of my favorites are the stations with 80s music, classical music (highly appropriate for my office), and others. Just fantastic selection, and something us tape-the-song-off-the-radio-with-the-noise-in-the-background kind of folks never imagined. Getting little sisters to keep quiet while attempting to create such a recording studio in one’s teenage bedroom was not an easy feat. I failed miserably.

Years later one of those songs would become “our song” for my first doomed marriage. For years after the divorce, and even some prior to honestly, I would not listen to it if it came on the radio, and I refused to put it on my iPod when those came out. It made me a little barfy, just because it brought back so many bad memories, broken dreams, and heartache. Not to delve too much into that portion of my life, but if I could go back and slap my 18-year old self, I would. Just not the best decision I ever made, but alas, as I tell many of my clients, my time machine is on the fritz, so we have to acknowledge our mistakes and forge ahead.

The problem with Alexa is that she doesn’t know this song issue that I have. She just plays whatever is on her list. Sometimes when an unmemorable song comes on her radio, I’m too far away for her to hear me scream “Alexa skip song!” or too far away from my phone with it’s accompanying app to push the fast-forward button. Sometimes I just have to deal. I hate those times. I know the tears, the bad memories, and the yuck is going to shortly follow if I allow it.

Yesterday it happened. *That* song came on. I was close enough, and I reached up to push the fast-forward button on the shower speaker through which it was playing. Just as I was about to hit the button, I reached back. Memories of a 1985-ish dance came to mind, overtaking the other memories that formerly occupied my brain with this song. A cast on my arm. A smoky haze filling the large lunchroom / auditorium where the chairs and tables had been cleared for a dance floor. A punch bowl, sans any added flavoring sat on the table. Me, in a dress I don’t remember. I pictured him wearing his usual khaki pants and a “nice shirt” as our mothers would have said at the time. My friends huddled close with their boyfriends. Me huddled close with my best friend. Like magic, I smiled, remembering that moment vividly for the first time in a long time, smiling and letting the memory fully replace the bad one. Feeling healed.

I haven’t spoken to him in a really long time, my best friend for so many years. I used to have dreams that he was harmed or hurt, and I’d wake up really scared that it was true. Although we’d remained good friends throughout school, after high school, we went our separate ways. I believe I’ve seen him two or three times since, but I hear he’s doing well. After many years of bad dreams, I called him at Sweetie’s insistence. The dreams stopped, never to return. It was a good thing. I hadn’t remembered that song and our dance for a long time, but it all came rushing back yesterday. I guess it was my mind’s way of replacing the bad with the good.

I’ll take that. I’m pretty sure he’d agree. He always had my best interest at heart, as I did his.

Now I have a new best friend. He’s here every day, and he makes it all better. For the past 13 years, we’ve had so many adventures. I can’t think of many others who would encourage their wife to call someone from her past to stop bad dreams, but mine did. For that, and for the memories these songs bring back every single time, I’m most utterly thankful.