dance it out

I went to Burlington over the weekend, and, as usual, a little bit of magic seeped in. On Saturday night, I had planned to just stay in, watch Roseanne and edit photos. My mom and Bruce were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live from the '70s where George Harrison and Paul Simon performed together.

Bruce said, "I have some old George Harrison records in the basement somewhere."

I said, "Really? LET'S GO."

I have never listened to music on records. Bruce has a few boxes stashed away in the basement, and my mom has a small collection from her youth tucked away on a shelf. My dad had a collection of 8-tracks before he sold the Nova that I remember flipping through one Father's Day years ago. I barely remember cassette tapes... In the back of my brain, there's a memory of my grandma playing one of children's songs in the car whenever we went to the mall. I have long since given away all the bubblegum pop and boy-band CD's that littered my bookshelves as a tween. My collection of mix CD's that my friends made for me in high school has a permanent home in my car: a reminder of late night drives down the back roads, singing along at the top of my lungs as the ultimate form of freedom.

I remember my first iPod, a bright blue Mini (this was pre-iPod Nano) that barely fit in my pocket. I spent hours downloading MP3's from Limewire and the corresponding album art off of Google Images in an attempt to organize my iTunes library. After high school, I finally upgraded to my beloved iPod Classic. (You just can't get 120 GB of good old-fashioned early-2000's goodness anymore. I wish mine still worked... I would kill to get all that music back.) Then Myspace crashed, Facebook took over, and you were either listening to music on Pandora, Spotify, or YouTube (and now everyone just streams their music anyway!).

I never fully understood the experience of listening to music until Saturday night. I still get chills listening to Mayday Parade's A Lesson in Romantics album if the mood is right, but Bruce was on a mission to give me a lesson in his favorite '70s rock. We started listening to George Harrison, then switched to The Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton. My mom came downstairs when Bruce put on her favorite song, "Key to the Highway." We had a family dance party in the basement, jamming while Eric Clapton wailed on the guitar. I filed it away as one of my favorite memories. The joy that comes from music and dancing and laughter with your favorite people is irreplaceable.

Bruce kept saying, "This is so cool. I haven't listened to this in over FORTY YEARS! I bought all these with my paper route money when I was a teenager."

I started snooping through my mom's record collection and found the definitive soundtrack to my childhood. The Eagles, Bob Seager, Bruce Springsteen, the Grease soundtrack... Tucked quietly near the back of the stack was Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. My face lit up. I stole my mom's CD as soon as I was old enough to drive and then begged to drive her car instead of my grandma's so I could listen to it. There was a good six months or more where it was all I listened to driving to and from Milwaukee every day when I worked at a portrait studio. She begrudgingly bought another CD, and Bruce conceded to let us listen to the record.

Singing along off-key to Stevie Nicks with my mom and dancing around the basement made me feel the joy in the best way. There's nothing like making new memories to the soundtrack of your childhood and being surrounded by the people who know you best.