Not long ago, someone sent me an email with one of those "get to know you" surveys. I hadn't humored that type of thing since the myspace days, but I glanced over it anyway, thinking I'd fill it out if I could think of some witty answers. One of the questions was pretty standard for this type of thing, and I'm sure I'd answered it at some time in the past already, but this time...it captured my introspect for a bit.
The task was to name a song that brought back good memories every time you heard it. I tilted my head and glanced to the side, letting a few choice hooks and their accompanying retrospection take me back in time. Suddenly, I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a Jeep Wrangler with the top down, cruising down the strip of road that parallels the beach in Clearwater Florida. A hand is resting on my knee, I have a light buzz, and the radio carelessly thumps out a tune. I'm ridiculous in love. The kind that feels like a drug, only better, and I feel like I can never come down. My mind dances with the possibility of the ever sought American Dream, and I feel like I have all the time in the world to make it happen. My only thoughts about the sun which is baking into my shoulders concern the possibility of tan lines...not of the skin cancer that will one day take away a friend. I'm full from a decadent meal at a quaint little cafe' that overlooking the ocean, which was carelessly charged to a credit card. I don't fully know or appreciate it, but I'm living one of the best days of my life. Everyone I love is still alive. Everything I've ever dreamed of still feels like a possibility. Everything in my world has the appearance of a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block.
There are days ahead of me that are frightening...painful...nearly devoid of hope. The biggest defeats and hurts of my lifetime will come to pass in the years that follow that moment. I will become a different person many times over, often not even sure that I know myself at all. Yet, in my darkest moments, my mind can still see that day, that place, that moment. The memory of that bliss is tucked away inside of me, lying dormant until a time when I need a little piece of it to hold me up. There is strength and hope locked into that memory that will never fade.
My best days are fairly different now. They consist of impromptu kisses and "I love you's" from tiny folks who inherited the key to my heart from their Daddy, and the meals are served up on the kitchen table from food bought with coupons. The long days spent sashaying the malls and leisurely having lunch with good friends have given way to quick text messages and the occasional dinner date. Though they may bear no resemblance to that time years ago in my mind, they are still Best Days. I hope that I'm wise enough now not to take them for granted, and to store them away in my mind's eye for the inevitable trials and pain that lie ahead in life when I'll need to draw on them to keep me hopeful and strong. The songs that will bring back good memories in the future are on my radio today, and I look forward to coming back here.
The song that takes me back to that Jeep ride:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfb_CwBma0
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