She's Eclectic

It's around 2003. I've lost weight and I'm wearing a purple clingy top and a nice pair of black pants. I'm driving my Saturn down Victoria Avenue toward my apartment in Oxnard, workday over, the lowering sun in my eyes, moonroof open, my hair blowing. Passing one strawberry field after another. Why does this mundane memory make me so happy? The song. It created the moment. It got me in the moment. A moment in my life that never happened again. It's so important to be there when it happens.

This song makes me think of Mom (she loved Jakob's father and I think she would have liked this—why didn't I ever play it for her?), the nineties (that time before the apocalypse), Miami (that odd, yet oddly satisfying, little eddy in my story, before I set out for California), the yearning and pain of life, everything. It's just such a great package of mood and music.

If someone had told me, when I was 16 or so, that 50 years later I'd be listening to newfound music that would make me as happy as my favorites made me feel then, I'd have relaxed about life a little bit.

This was playing while I had a certain singular, one-time-only experience. If it takes until I'm 95, I'm going to dance to this with the man I love.

Bob took us out on Lake Superior one day in his boat. Spring 1993. It was a brilliant, blue-sky day, ducks flying south. The water flew up in crystals as the boat cut through the little waves. I was troubled that day, feeling uncertain about how my life would go. But the peace of that day, with my Gramma, my brother, and me, and this song on the radio, gave me something to hold onto.

Not over it. Maybe never will be.

I think, hearing this, for the first time in my life I cried over the fact that I'm going to die.

Maybe, with grace,  I'll be done with my grieving by the time I shuffle off.

Even though it came out in 1973, the first time I heard this album in full was the fall I went to New College. My experience of that time wasn't necessarily blissful, but there's a golden glow to the memories now.

This has an echo of Neil Young's "Old Man," which would automatically make it a fave, but it also speaks to a feeling I know I've had in a past life and would love to have in this one.

How I wanted this to be my song with someone. Well, I'm not dead yet.