Music Memory: The Long Road Home

I did it. I made it back to talk about music again this Monday. Yay!!!

But first, you have to make it through a sappy story 'bout my college days. (Wah wahhh.) Sorry about that.

When I went away to college I thought it’d be a unique time. I figured struggling to make it on my own in a new city with unfamiliar faces would be a one-time occurrence.

It turns out, I was wrong

 

So much of life feels like leaving home for the first time.

Equal parts excitement and terror. Great hope and expectation, but timidity too.

 

Still, I’m glad I didn’t know that at eighteen.

Tricking myself into thinking the sense of discomfort and uncertainty I was feeling - the stuff that comes anytime you set out into unchartered territory - would be fleeting, was one of the greatest things I ever did for myself.

‘Cause it enabled me to stick things out, even through tough patches.

It gave me hope that even if things didn’t get better soon, they would, eventually.

Believing that “starting out feeling” was temporary caused me to make the most of my circumstances, trusting that they would be changing.

 

It took years to realize that I was what would be changing, and that every season of life feels like another start. (For better and worse.)

And I’m thankful.

I'm thankful some lessons take a while, like a lifetime, to learn.

 

 

I have lots of fond memories from that time in my life, that nostalgic era when I was just tiptoeing out on my own, trying to find my way.

And a lot of those memories center around music, as so many good memories do:

 

There was one painfully ungraceful turn around the dance floor with a cute boy I met at a freshman mixer, while Texas country played. And later the time I scarred my elbow singing a bit too enthusiastically, “the party never ends.”

Sophomore year it seemed like such a good idea to learn all the words (and dance steps) to You Don’t Own Me, as performed on First Wive’s Club.   

The following semester I remember a there being a car ride home from San Antonio filled with a hymn sing with my new roommates. What a good time that was.

BackStreet Boys dance parties around our apartment followed, and I bought my first Third Day CD from the bookstore on campus (and decided God’s voice must sound a lot like Mac Powell’s).

 

But the music memory that comes to mind each time I roll down the windows and crank up tunes in the car, is pulling out of my parents’ drive on my way back to school after each break.

My brother and sister still lived at home then. And often my brother would send me off with a CD he’d created of good driving tunes.

 

A lot of the songs were sad, or bittersweet really. They reminded me of home, of him, of the simple and sure life I’d left behind.

But they also somehow echoed with experiences I’d yet to have.

They told stories of love. And loss. Of struggle and success.

 

And listening to them – whether it be songs from the Scrubs’ soundtrack, or a silly rap song Josh was fond of at the time – made me feel a little less alone in the world.

It helped me feel connected, both to the family I was driving away from, and to the fuzzy future I couldn’t quite see.

 

It gave me hope, that the people that meant the most to me would always be near at heart, and that most things would have a way of working themselves out.

Even if I couldn’t see it, even if I could barely make it back to school, both for a faulty sense of direction and often tears clouding my view, I trusted that the long journey would be worth it in the end.

And I always made it back. Safely. Worse for the wear sometimes. But also a bit stronger.

 

Those CD’s, titled in handwritten Sharpie, kept me company on a lonely road. They were ties to home, and promises that someday all the hard work of coming and going would seem worthwhile.

They strengthened my faith that the road would fold out before me, so long as I kept moving the best I could.

And it always did too.

 

The uncertainty. The tears. The struggle.

We all face.

They’re worth it.

 

I say that not as someone whose finally reached her destination, but as someone making peace (daily, sometimes difficultly) with the journey.

It's scary sometimes, navigating that long, dark road, but the journey goes a lot faster with good music. And it goes a lot smoother with good company.

And I'm glad for that.

  

This isn't actually a song that made the Mix CD cut (go figure), but it is a good driving tune. One made for the road.

So happy, safe driving friends.

I'll see you out on the black top.