There and Back Again

Disposition: Melancholic (sudden feeling)
Listening: iTunes purchases
Reading: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Watching: Smallville: The Complete First Season
Obsessing: Sir Ian McKellen
Pondering: Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

A few nights ago, I was watching Lifetime TV’s Women Rock! Songs From the Movies benefit concert dedicated to raising awareness in the battle against breast cancer. One of the performers was Debbie Reynolds who performed her famous song, Tammy. I know the song because I once tried to play it in the piano but never did succeed mainly because I can’t really play the piano (?). I always thought this song has one of the saddest melodies I have ever heard although it is a generally happy lullaby. Anyway, as I was telling my sister this she told me that this song was a favorite of our older brother Michael way back when he was just a baby. It was the song that would put him to sleep and a song he liked to hum.

Funny how some songs always seem to mark a story in your life. They carry with them a certain memory, a thought, a smell, a taste, and a certain feeling. It could very well be that the lyrics of the song is irrelevant to the story you have but nonetheless it’s a reminder. A song starts playing and all of a sudden you are transported to another place in time and remember a face from long ago. Sometimes it transports you to a sad moment you don’t want to remember but sometimes it carries with it a fond memory of happy days, familiar faces and beloved relations.

When my sister told me about Tammy and our brother Michael, the song just took on a whole new mood. It brought back memories of my brother, of when we were younger and he would babysit me and my sister, of him playing the guitar, of him taking us to see WarGames or was it Return of the Jedi?

It’s been a long time since I’ve last seen my brother and it’s been awhile since I’ve really thought about the years gone by. Now every time I hear Tammy or try to play it in the piano again, I will be remembering the good old days when the world was young and days were good. I will imagine my brother Michael, just a baby, slumbering to the tune.