Mooning over music

There are certain things only my mother can convince me to do: have lunch at the McDonald's drive--through. Help her shop for bras. Watch "Dancing with the Stars." 

Well, ok, almost.

So when she called me last week with one of her "must-see TV" directives, I listened as usual. I dutifully turned on PBS and found an old Andy Williams special, which I watched along with those annoying pledge breaks.

Here's why she called: Many of my mother's memories unspool like a skein of yarn when she hears certain music; I'm sure that's true of many of us. But then I realize many of her memories are mine, and many of mine hers, as if they are interchangeable. And they don't always have to make sense.

It's safe to say Williams' show evoked something in both of us. For her, I think, the days when singers had their own variety shows. Sitting with my grandparents in their dining room watching  "The Lawrence Welk Show" despite its campiness. Shows in the round at the Valley Forge Music Fair.

I can relate to all of those, because music can take you places you wanted to go and go back to. To a past that sometimes doesn't live up to our gauzy memories of it. 

My parents, and especially my father, were a great influence on me as far as music is concerned. I came to love songs they loved. I love other genres of  music, but the songs that always blow me away, that make me misty-eyed, are the great American standards. 

So when Andy Williams sang "Moon River" on that old telecast my mom wanted me to watch, I rested my head on my hand, closed my eyes and just let it sink in.

Two drifters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see

And I was back in my grandparents' dining room.

It isn't just the standards that move me. John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" makes me wilt because I have two sons. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" reminds me of my sister's gallant fight against cancer. Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young' evokes my time at a Catholic high school for girls.     
  
And apparently I have bequeathed some musical memories to my children. My 23-year-old son once made a reference to Sinatra and I was taken aback. How, I asked him, do you know about him? His response was a kind of "Uh, duh" moment.

"Because you always made us listen to him in the car," he responded, evoking the many times my boys  were little car-seat captives who had to listen to whatever I played on the stereo.

It's easy to forget how we might have influenced our children. So, are there musical memories that are interchangeable with those of  my sons? Apparently.

How cool is that?


  








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