One Song at a Time

"And it doesn't matter how I cry
My tears, so far, are a waste of time
If I turn away
Am I strong enough to see it through
Go crazy is what I will do..."

–The Bee Gees, If I Can't Have You (as sung by Yvonne Elliman)

Every time I hear the song today, the chorus still haunts me. The crescendo of keyboards, strings, horns and Yvonne Elliman's voice brings back the old angst and longing. Or, at least, what my idea of longing was way back then, that new funny feeling trouncing on my stomach like a trampoline in the hot sun. I didn't fully understand the words of the song then, just how they made me feel, like waking from an amazing dream that wasn't real.

All I could think about was her, one of the girls in my sixth grade class. My awkward memories of her birthday party that year are snapshots still fresh in my memory, even decades later. I had the biggest crush on her and I never said a word to anyone about it at the time.

Besides "If I Can't Have You," the other song I remember most vividly from the birthday party was "Ballroom Blitz" by the glam-rock band Sweet.

"And the man in the back is ready to crack
As he raises his hands to the sky
And the girl in the corner is everyone's woman
She could kill you with a wink of her eye..."

And that's where I stood, along the periphery of the room, a skinny, asthmatic and shy 12-year-old boy pining for the most beautiful girl in the world, who most likely just invited me to her party to be nice. We weren't even really friends at the time, but we did share mutual friends. It was my first real crush that I can remember, and it was then that my hormones began to rage like rivers after a spring Sierra thaw. But, my pubescent heart was broken. Self-inflicted, but broken. She didn't say more than a few words to me during her party, and I didn't say more than a few words to anyone that afternoon. I remember listening to the song over and over again (my mom was a big fan of Saturday Night Fever and the soundtrack, a movie I wouldn't see in its entirety until many years later). I would also make more mix tapes of my favorite songs at the time, to feel those feels over and over, something I had already been doing for a couple of years.

When I heard it again recently, it got me thinking about the changes I went through back then, because our oldest daughter Beatrice is now 11 and entering the pre-dawn shadows of adolescence. She's not quite there yet, although there have been physical and psychological changes. But no hormonal crushes yet as far as we know.

The changes they are a-comin', though. Beatrice and her younger sister Bryce have been exposed more to older romantic love relationship themes through movies, games, music and friends; it's going to happen no matter how much we monitor it all. Plus, the self-awareness of these themes are now opening up like smelling delicious food for the first time that's never been tasted. Yet. Blech.

But that time will come, just like it did for us when we were young. There will be infatuation, obsession and heartbreak. There will be first loves, and seconds. There will be relationships pocked with imperfection. Until then, we're grateful that both our girls have healthy, loving relationships to emulate, like ours, their mom and dad. They see us hug and kiss and tell each other how much we love each other daily. They tease us and tell us to stop, that we're embarrassing them, but we know they love it because our love comforts them. They see our love played out in the little daily things of life, of cooking meals and doing dishes, of cleaning the house and paying bills, of planning day-to-day activities and the future. They see us joke with each other and laugh. And sometimes they see us disagree and even fight a little, and then work it out and compromise. Always a work in progress, we work daily on being self-aware and mindfully present for each other, our love and our children.

There will also be the soundtracks of their lives to remember all the feels. The girls now love music as much as we did at their ages, although they love pop music much more than rock and roll, much to my chagrin. But that's okay, because I've always liked a mix of all kinds of music, just like their mom does. They now have their own playlists on their own devices and make their own mixes with my help. They even record songs from device to device via the mic, asking us to be quiet when we're near their recording area. We tell them that we can help make the playlists on the computer and synch to their devices, just like we've already done many times, but they're having fun recording the old-school way. We did the same things when we were young, decades before the technology we have today. I've made plenty of mix tapes, mix CDs (which doesn't have the same ring as tapes) and playlists in my time, including the many I've made for my lovely wife. The girls will continue to make their own music mixes as well for themselves, and eventually for others, and others will make mixes for them. Sigh.

Listening to favorite old songs is just like looking at faded cherished photographs -- the visceral memories attached to each are forever bound to our hearts. We relive them through our ears of today, the past pleasures and the pain, one song at a time.