Memories Are Made Of This

It's amazing how music can trigger such visceral memories. Some songs are so powerful, I can almost physically feel myself jolted into the past, suspended there for a moment's time, reliving a long ago instant as fully as if it were the here and now.

Everyone has songs like these, and I unexpectedly heard one this evening while on my way home from an errand. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I blindly grabbed an unlabeled mix CD my husband made for me, pushing it into the CD player.

Instantly I heard a woman's giggle, then the music.

Dark in the city, night is a wire....

Suddenly, I wasn't a 39-year-old mother driving a minivan out of a shopping center. I was a high school junior, in my bedroom, listening to the radio and getting ready for a date. I could feel the warm spring breeze from the window. I could feel the blue eye pencil sliding along my lids, and I almost detected the faint aroma of Aqua Net. I was there, just as surely as I was sitting in my minivan on Eagle Road. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find the next song was "On The Loose" by Saga, a song I haven't heard or thought of in years.

So many memories wrapped up in music. I can hear one note of "My Sharona" and be transported back to the eighth grade choir room, the KQRS blasting on the stereo before the teacher showed up. I can see kids running up and down the carpeted risers, all singing more fully and loudly than they ever did during classtime. I can see Kris G. in the middle of it all, Metcalf Junior High School's answer to Farrah Fawcett. And then I remember how much I wanted to look like her, and how awkward I felt next to her.

"You Should Hear How She Talks About You"... it's early June of 1982, and I'm just a few weeks from my 16th birthday. I'm at Valleyfair with my best friend and her boyfriend, and I've met someone. His name is David. He's visiting from Texas. It's 70 degrees out, but he complains about the cold and wonders how I can stand it. We're riding the Ferris wheel together, and he's wearing a blue v-neck velour sweater. He has feathered hair and the most beautiful hazel eyes I've ever seen. I know he's going to kiss me, and he does.

"This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide"... it's the spring of 1983, and my school's hockey team has made the state high school championship game. Far too many of my crowd is crammed into my best friend's boyfriend's 1974 Mustang, speeding down the freeway to the St. Paul Civic Center for the game. It's Saturday, and we feel like the whole world belongs to us. The windows are unrolled, and I'm sitting on a boy's lap in the cramped backseat of the Mustang, laughing as my hair continually whips the side of my face. I have never felt as free as I do in this moment.

I have dozens more memories just like these. They are quietly filed away in my brain's back room, waiting for one note to release them to the forefront, flooding my present and pulling me into a time warp if only for the flash of the instant it takes me to recognize the song.