music memory.

In elementary school I learned that our bodies have all kinds of memory systems. We remember some things easily, but other things are only recalled because of a trigger, suddenly we remember a moment, the balloons at our third birthday party, the dog that got out of its pen and tore, barking, down the street at us, the girl that sat in the front corner of the music class. Triggers can be through any of the senses. I remember a lesson on how we have smell-memory and sound and sight-memory.

Music is my emotion-memory trigger. I've been thinking about it a great deal lately because this summer's country offering is pretty strong so I've been tuning into the country station (THE WOLF. Ridiculous name). I'm finding that this summer I feel, eerily, like it's high school. I am 16, driving the gold Honda I shared with my sister, and I do not care about how I look except that I'm tan.

My childhood is triggered by Billy Joel, Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor primarily. I'm thankful it doesn't take Veggie Tales sing along and Raffi to get that period of my life to the forefront of my mind, so mom and dad, if you have ever felt guilt about the music that was in our house, let that go. The songs of these old artists make my stomach hurt wishing I was spindly and miniscule again, running around until it was dark outside in overalls with wild, whispy hair and dirty feet and my sister and brother. It makes me think of being in the subaru with my dad on Saturday morning driving to the Meineke and Home Depot and Dunkin Doughnuts, how we'd drive with the windows down and I would watch the tiny dust hairs drift around the inside of the car when we were stopped as I waited in the parking lot. These songs make me feel peaceful and safe in a way that I don't think I'll ever, as an adult, feel again. For that reason I want to cry when I hear them. For this reason I smile: I realize, in listening to Carolina in my Mind, Cecilia, and The Entertainer, that I had a sweet, sweet childhood. It's hard to know, objectively, if you had a "healthy childhood." You don't really know how dysfunctional you are, I don't think. But music helps me to believe, to know, to remember, that the process of growing up was happy for me.

Moving forward. Country music, as previously declared, takes me in a rush back to high school. Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, SheDaisy, The Dixie Chicks... when I hear those songs that came out between 2000 and 2004 I get pitched backward in time and there I am again, plopped back into the wonder and joy of growing up. The way I felt like I was a real person, not just a kid. Learning how to drive was the most liberating thing, and the boy I loved and I would drive at night in the summers listening to music pouring out of the windows, just laughing and singing. My friend Megan and I went to a dozen concerts, even met Tim McGraw, and belted out every song at the concert where we sat so far back on the lawn in the middle of July. Those country singers take me back to a state of eagerness, this wild readiness to GO! Embark on life, college, moving away, learning to be independent.

I met Patty Griffin in college and she became the artist of my life. It's interesting, I think she may have become a Christian in the last few years and her newest album, Downtown Church, was a lot of old hymns re-done, lovely. I love it, but I loved her other albums more. Primarily Living with Ghosts, an album which lives with me almost daily. Her music is fabulously beautiful and deeply stirring. She was full of sadness and curiosity and angst and trouble, and those were things with which I became acquainted in college. Her music moved me then, and it moves me now. She understands how my brain work even though she doesn't know me. Now, hearing those songs, I feel a little bit of sadness, but mostly the maximum of my depth. I believe that college teaches us about our true selves more intensely than any other life experience. To me, Patty equates the way I felt in college: fully spent, fully shot, and fully present at the base of myself. Also, her song Heavenly Day was Mark and my first dance on May 2, 2009, and that song makes me stupid, crazy happy. That was the best five minutes of my entire life.

Coldplay and Imogen Heap are the summers I spent in Florida, totally free and easy and unburdened. Sara Groves is the year we were engaged. Frank Sinatra is Kaili with me in Italy. There are thousands more. And here I find myself again, listening to country music after an 8-year hiatus. And do you know, I feel so free and so tan.