With Music by My Side

Without a doubt, music is a powerful force in most people’s lives. The emotions, images, and memories that a perfectly written set of words paired with the right rhythm can evoke is astounding. What’s even more interesting is that the internal experience of a song can be different for everyone. A song that might resonate sadness within me, might be interpreted as strong and empowering for you. Some people might pay attention to the lyrics and dissect their personal meaning as though the lyricist wrote those specific words just for them. Another person might listen to the heaviness of the bass or the tempo of the electric guitar and find their connection with the song there. In all honesty, I really hadn’t thought much about how important music really was to me in this context until I started writing this. It’s like a long overdue visit with the best friend that I took for granted because I didn’t really stop to think about all the amazing memories and good times she was there for or all the times that she helped pick me back up from my lowest points and inspired me to move on stronger.

The Younger Years

There are some songs from my childhood that take me back so deeply that I almost feel like I am there. One of these songs is Biggest Part of Me by Ambrosia. The lyrics themselves don’t hold any special meaning, I just remember that the song played a lot on the radio and for some reason it conjures up memories of sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car with my older brother and younger sister while we waited in the McDonald’s parking lot for my dad to come pick us up for the weekend. When I hear this song, I can smell the inside of my mother’s VW Beetle and I can feel how the plastic armrest felt beneath my fingernails as I picked at it and tried to ignore my mother as she complained about my dad and the fact that he was always late. He was. He was always late and very lackadaisical about everything, but I never liked hearing my mother say bad things about him.

Another song that conjures memories from my childhood would be Believe it or Not (Theme from “Greatest American Hero”) performed by Joey Scarbury. This show was quite silly, but the song played on the radio all the time. Even hearing it now, I mentally find myself sitting on the couch next to my brother watching the show and actually getting along. This was before cable television, and I don’t even think the television had a remote at the time either. This song for some reason just conjures up a lot of memories from my childhood because of the time period that it existed and how easy things seemed then.

Of course, I was all about Cindy Lauper, Madonna, The Bangles, Fleetwood Mac, and so many others at the time, but two songs that played a strong role in defining who I was as a child, or wanted to be when I grew up were What a Feeling (theme song to the movie “Flashdance”) by Irene Cara and Fame (from the show “Fame”) by Irene Cara. From a young age I was a dancer, and both my mother and younger sister took dance lessons as well. I was probably too young to watch the movie Flashdance because of the adult content, but I do remember my mother and I watching it together and I absolutely loved it. The same goes for the television show Fame. I remember watching this show with my mother as well and wishing I could be like these characters. I never shied away from the stage as a child. My hopes, dreams, and aspirations throughout most of my younger years were to be a dancer/singer.

The Teen Years

So, let’s fast forward a few years to the age of 14 because that’s when life really changed for me. At the age of 14 I started to have difficulty walking. My legs felt heavy and weak all the time and none of the doctors could tell my mother what was wrong with me. For the most part, the doctors either told my mother that I was making it up for attention (I had been skipping school at the time because I literally couldn’t get out of bed some mornings) or it was just growing pains.

It was during one of my dance recitals right before I turned 15, that my mother finally believed that something was wrong. I remember four other girls and myself were wearing bright pink poodle skirts with button down short sleeved white shirts and the dance routine was a compilation of songs from the 50’s. The routine started off with each of us doing three cartwheels across the stage. During my second cartwheel, I fell and no matter how hard I tried; I could not get back up. That is when my mother knew, because as she put it, “I would never shy away from the stage, so something had to be wrong.”

Finally, a doctor had the bright idea to do an x-ray of my back, which led to other tests and doctors discovering an enormous benign tumor (the size of a basketball) that had grown around all my organs taking up space wherever it could in my chest cavity and had wrapped itself around my spine, essentially crushing it. I was immediately sent to Children’s Hospital in Boston. I spent about 8 months in and out of the hospital and ended up having four surgeries. The first surgery was to remove the tumor from my spine. The second and third surgery were to remove the tumor from my chest cavity. Because the tumor had destroyed most of the vertebrae in my spine, the fourth surgery entailed rebuilding my spinal column with bone from my pelvis and having rods placed in my back to stabilize my spine.

After the first surgery I was told I would never walk again. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I would never dance again. What? My stubborn 15-year-old brain couldn’t process any of this and I went through a range of emotions from denial to depression to anger and everything else in between. This period of my life forced me to not only be strong, but it also forced me to look at everything including myself and others differently.

Of course, songs like Gloria Gaynor’s, I will Survive and Survivor’s, Eye of the Tiger took on a deeper meaning because I was a survivor and a fighter, but I also remember Joni Mitchell’s, Both Sides Now, had a particular impact. This song hit a nerve because no longer was I able to just look at life from the perspective of a young girl, I was forced to grow up quick. The illusion of what could be had been stripped away and replaced with a reality of what is. The inevitable realization that everything you thought you knew, really wasn’t true at all.

It was difficult to be so different at the age of 15. To return to school in a wheelchair. To have the girls that used to wait for me at my locker every day to bully me now be nice to me and look at me with pity. To have the boy that I had a crush on and had finally spoken to months before all this happened now completely ignore me because he felt bad and didn’t know what to say. And then there were my friends and the realization that when something like this happens, friendships are tested. True friends laugh with you and don’t look at you like you are broken, but instead understand and volunteer to roll you down the newly built ramp outside the school in two feet of snow so you can go to Chorus, which is in the basement and is the only class in which you don’t feel different because these are your people.

Two songs that truly capture what this all meant to me and still make me smile when I think of the people that were in my life without question would be You’ve Got a Friend by Carole King and That’s What Friends are For by Dionne Warwick.

Later in life, Natalie Merchant’s song Wonder quickly became one of my favorite songs because of what I went through when I was 15. There was no explanation for what I had gone through, where the tumor came from or more importantly why the nerves regenerated in such a short time. My prognosis went from never walking again to the shock and awe in my neurosurgeon’s eyes when he saw me actually walk into his office on my own a year after all my surgeries. “People see me, I’m a challenge to your balance. I’m over your heads, how I confound you and astound you…” Such an empowering song!

The Two Men Who Taught Me About Love and Shattered My Heart

I met my ex-husband when I was still in high school and about a year and a half after my surgeries. I knew the moment I waked up the stairs into his living room and saw him sitting in that blue chair that he was the man I was going to marry. I was sixteen years old; someone really should have talked some sense into me. Although, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have listened. He wasn’t a nice person from the very beginning, but I ignored all the signs and it only got worse. He was very controlling and abusive. When I look back on my life from that time, I don’t even recognize who I was. When I first met him, my self-confidence was low, I was covered in scars from all my surgeries and sadly, when I finally left him, two kids and a few years later there were new scars and fresh wounds buried deep within.

I will never forget him telling me once that he would break me, as in how a trainer breaks a horse. He definitely broke me. One of the more painful memories took place after I started singing in a band. The idea was his after his friend’s band had lost their lead singer, who was a female. They had just started recording in a studio, so they were actively looking for someone to take over for her. So, my husband volunteered me. I was ecstatic. I ended up going to the studio twice and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Since we had two small children at the time, he stayed home with them. When I got home after the second time recording, I immediately showed him the CD and had him play it. It was surreal, to hear myself on a CD. He seemed happy about it as well. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and later that same night in a drunken rage he accused me of sleeping with all the guys in the band, smashed the CD and made me quit.

The song Broken Wing by Martina McBride has always reminded me of this moment and the long road I had to take to realize that I was strong enough to leave – and for good. I sang Martina’s song so many times at the top of my lungs alone in my living room. A constant reminder that I would never allow myself to be broken again.

The second man who taught me about love and was actually the first to teach me, was my dad. I also put him in the category as one of the two who shattered my heart because he was also the first to teach me about true loss when he passed away 18 years ago. My dad was an amazing man, he was charming, very funny, and friendly to everyone he met; you know, the type of person who has never met a stranger. There was a darkness that existed deep within him though that few people ever saw. He wasn’t violent, it was just a dark deep sadness that he kept hidden behind his constant smile and jokes. He was a Vietnam Vet who had seen more atrocities than I could have ever imagined, and he never talked about it; those dark memories just haunted him in silence. Despite that though, the Carole King song, You’ve Got a Friend, also reminded me of my dad because whenever I needed him most, he was there no matter what and this helped to shape my perception of what love should look like. He was also my rock when I decided to leave my ex husband. I don't know what I would have done without him at this time in my life.

After he died though, Reba Macintyre’s, The Greatest Man I Never Knew summed up my life with my dad as perfectly as a song could. Sadly, I didn’t really know him. I knew he wrote poetry; I remembered reading it as a little girl, but I didn’t know that he loved philosophy or that he was a huge Elvis Presley fan, and always wanted to learn to play the guitar. I did know though that he was a huge Jewel fan, another favorite artist of mine and he kept all her CDs in his truck. He was a man of many layers and I regret not knowing him better.

Present Day

Music still plays a strong role in my life. Almost three years ago I had another major back surgery that has since left me in chronic pain. Because of this, I have done extensive research on natural ways to alleviate pain. Did you know that singing can help with chronic pain? I wouldn’t advise belting out a tune if you have a headache, but other than that, it does work. I guess it takes the mind off the pain and takes it to a more pleasant place. It isn’t permanent, but I will take what I can get.

So, that is a small glimpse into my personal life journey with music by my side. I wanted to include one more short story though as it does relate. I facetime with my granddaughter almost everyday because I live in Florida and my daughter and her family live in Texas. Even though my granddaughter is only sixteen months old, and the conversations are very one sided, she knows who I am and gets very excited to see me on the iPad screen. She also loves music and loves to dance. A couple of days ago my daughter turned on some music so that my granddaughter would dance. My daughter was playing a relatively slow song, not exactly danceable by my standards, so I told her to play some disco because I know my granddaughter has disco in her soul. My daughter changed the music to disco and my granddaughter, who was sitting in her little pink chair, turned, raised her little eyebrows, and looked at my daughter with a look like, yes, this is my jam mom! She immediately got up and started her offbeat swaying and head shaking. She is her Nana’s girl! The song that my daughter played was Abba’s Dancing Queen, which throughout my life has always been that one song that sets my dancing soul free like no other.