The Playlist

You know as well as I do that every road trip needs its own playlist. I spent years of my life meticulously putting together tape mixes that would capture the essence of wherever we were going whether it be across the country, or an off-campus lunch break mini road trip to get a blender.
There were rules to this game. You couldn't have two songs by the same artist back to back, and you had to throw in Disney or Andrew Lloyd Webber to shake it all up toward the end of the first side. True feelings for the guy riding next to you to summer camp were revealed at the beginning of the second side. (In this scenario, you have deftly let that other girl sit next to him during the first half of the tape mix but then when you get out at 7/11, "hey - let's switch seats" - and it all seems so natural that we're sitting with the sides of our knees touching right when "I'm the one who wants to be with you" comes on.) 
And the last three songs need to be sentimental... poignant, leaving you with a sweet taste in your mouth, the last one finishing strong with a well known top 40 to give everyone gratuitous feeling of substance and well being at the end.
 Oh yes, making the road trip soundtrack was a skill that I had down to a science.

We usually start our road trips with Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' (verging on the too crazy for 6 am-but-we-still-love-it) and I'm beginnning to think of the song as a fresh beginning: to pair it with that taking-off sensation of leaving the house, the road opening in front of us, the expectation of greatness to come - in all its highs and lows. Beyond that, sadly, the playlist in our car is a frenetic mix between whatever Real Music we manage to slip in, and repeat performances of "Pandamania", a vaguely Asian themed kid's worship album that nade the rounds this summer at every VBS in the evangelical world.
All I can say is: yikes.

Okay, so now I have a secret to tell you.
When you and I are talking; ninety percent of the time I have your soundtrack running through my head. Yes, I may be a little weird, but I'm not that scary, I promise. (And sorry that there is this fourth dimension to our friendship that I've never mentioned before.)
It could be really bad euro-pop music, or the theme to Pride and Prejudice, or Bruce Springsteen, or Serge Gainsbourg, Pink Martini...well, it really depends on who you are.

Sometimes the pairing of you and your soundtrack may be as easy as knowing how much you like Arcade Fire. Or it could be a song we listened to that one time when that guy broke up with you and we sat in your car with"Life is a Highway" blasting, swearing you would never ever under any circumstance date anyone again. Yeah, that lasted.
Or maybe the time you offhandedly remarked that you had a crush on Queen Latifah and I thought - you're kidding me, right?
You might remind me of the guy in Arrested Development and - voila - all I can hear is an upbeat tempo mandolin strum when you walk in the room.
This may be why I, chameleon-like, become more mellow, sassy, intense, girlish, reckless, prayerful or otherwise when I'm with you...it probably has a lot to do with your music, which -have I mentioned? - is really hard to separate from your person.
This has been a plague with me for my whole life. I can't divorce people from their soundtrack, although it does change with the seasons, and if we spend a lot of time together, you might have two or three thematic albums that rotate in and out, just like a cinematic score.
In some cases, you may have never heard of your theme music, but you have a light and delicate winsomeness about you: that lustrous hair, the pale skin that reminds me of a Debussy song about floating in a boat in the summertime 100 years ago. I'm sorry, but you are just a Debussy girl to me.

Of course I had my own theme music when I was a little girl, watching the yellow thread of highway winding out behind our car as we left for a road trip. I would rest my chin in the crook of my elbow, lean my head to the side so that I had a sad, forlorn look. I would imagine that this was the last time I would travel this road, that somewhere in my near future things would radically change and I would be stranded in Los Angeles airport with nothing but my backpack...or given a new family - one that lived in Florida - or that me and my dog (a husky of course) would end up riding trains west in the Great Depression.

I would gaze off to the horizon behind us, a tear would glisten on its way down my cheek, and in this self-induced crisis, my theme music would rise up and float all around me. Strangely, it was usually "America the Beautiful", thrumming in a crescendo of strings toward the emotional peak of the song, which evidently captured both the sentimentality and the gravity of this groundbreaking coming of age story.
Things did not turn out as crazy as I had imagined, but the Soundtrack, ever being revised, has remained a constant companion through all of life's endeavors.

The Soundtrack weaves its way through our family too.
So maybe "Black Dog" is not optimal kid music, but gingerly and methodically, as if introducing new vegetables to our skeptical little darlings, we are building up their appreciation for the music that gives us so much joy in life. I know they're going to love it someday.
And I wonder if they have their own theme music already playing in their little heads.

I love to hear Fiona singing "Glow for Jesus", a song that one of our high school students at church wrote. As I look through my rear view mirror and watch her singing through the repretoire of songs she knows, I wonder what she's thinking about. Her voice is pure and sweet, with four-year-old simplicity.
I realize that much of her soundtrack at this point is up to me, and that I'm creating the playlist of her musical education. What goes into her little head and grows in her heart is a reflection of my choices and values.

And as I think of her, my own theme music for Fiona comes up.
I can hear IZ singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow", the song Jeff chose to back the video of her birth and homecoming. It matches her sweet nature, her free spirit, her warmth. I see Fiona screaming the words to one of Adele's new songs, windows rolled down on a hot day and her hair splayed back from her forehead, blissful and loving the soulful, bluesy chords. Or dancing crazy to "Hey Bulldog", my girls' favorite Beatles song. Or singing "Get out the way, old Dan Tucker" giggling the whole time.

I think of her lying in bed at prayertime while I play guitar, singing the words that my mom wrote, and that I used to sing at bedtime too:

 "Thank you for holding me soft in your hand
 for giving me every new day from your plan
 help me to see the whole world in your light
and give me sweet peace when I whisper goodnight."

"Mommy, can we sing it again?"

I know how she feels. Life may be one huge playlist, but what more beautiful way to enjoy it than to sing it with your whole heart again and again and again.