The Music That Followed Me
I think I've had a lifelong relationship with John Denver. It began, as many childhood relationships do, with a crush. Little eight year old me thought he was so cute on the cover of his 1973 Greatest Hits album—with his round glasses, blond hair, and bright beautiful smile? Looking back, I realize I’ve measured parts of my life by John Denver songs.
In the summer of 1974, my family drove from our home in Washington State to Ottawa, Canada. The wood-paneled Ford Country Squire transported us across the country, my brother, sister, and I crammed into the back seats with all of our travelling essentials. My sister had a tape recorder and, in my memory, we listened to John Denver music over and over again. The lyrics are forever deeply embedded in my brain. Country Roads was probably the one I remember the most. To this day I can still hear the opening cords and find myself instinctively joining in: "Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong..." At eight years old I had no idea that a song about home could stay with me for the rest of my life.
Other memories from that journey in ‘74 are just as deeply embedded: my parents smoking non-stop with the windows rolled up; being relegated to the very back of the station wagon—as the youngest, I guess they figured that was the best place for me. For a few days of the trip I had a stomach flu and was provided with a green garbage bag just in case. To this day, the smell of a green garbage bag takes me right back to that station wagon. Funny how our noses remember things our minds would rather forget.
Hotels and motels dotted the journey. As soon as we reached our destination for the night, we'd pull on our bathing suits and head straight for the pool. Just two years before this move we had travelled from Philadelphia to the west coast, so I’m sure some of my memories are mixed up between the two trips. But I distinctly remember arriving at one motel and feeling utterly crushed that the pool was closed for maintenance. I can still picture it—dark, empty, quiet. There might have been tears.
Memory has a funny way of working. It doesn’t organize life chronologically. It gathers moments by feeling instead. A song, a smell, a landscape—and suddenly decades collapse into one another.
How can the same songs accompany us through completely different seasons of life and somehow remain unchanged while we change?
Years later, as my mom’s struggle with arthritis reached its most challenging stage, she needed to spend a period of time in a small nursing home that also cared for people with Alzheimer’s. Although physically she needed the support they could provide, mentally she was as sharp as a tack. The home was actually a beautiful old house that had once been a private residence. There were only a handful of residents, and the care felt deeply personal. It was the best place for her to be during one of the bleakest chapters of her life.
I visited as often as I could so she wouldn’t feel isolated. Every Sunday, musicians would come to entertain the residents. They were all wonderful, but there was one musician we especially looked forward to because he always included a few John Denver songs and he had a nice way with the residents.
At the appointed hour, tea was made, treats were brought out, and family members gathered with their loved ones. Residents—most of them in wheelchairs—were brought into the living room and arranged in a semicircle around the performers.
While the music played and the singers sang, it was so heartwarming to look around at the faces of the people there. Smiles, eyes closed, each person perhaps reaching for a memory carried within the music. Some sang every word, while most simply listened. It is a memory I treasure from an otherwise difficult chapter of my mother's life. She would let her voice sing out, and sometimes it would falter as emotion caught in her throat. As I'd glance over at her, tears would spring to my own eyes.
There's something so hopeful about music. It seems to have the remarkable ability to reach places that words alone cannot. Long after we've forgotten conversations or the details of ordinary days, a familiar melody can quietly unlock an entire season of our lives.
A few months ago, when Steve and I made our cross-country journey, somewhere along that 6-day drive, we listened to Country Roads. More than fifty years had passed since that first journey across Canada. I found myself singing the same words I had sung as a child, only now they carried a lifetime of experiences behind them. I realized that "home" isn't a place we arrive at just once. Its meaning changes as we do.
The songs hadn't changed. I had.
Perhaps that's why certain music moves us so deeply. We think we're listening to a favourite song, but we're also meeting every version of ourselves that has ever loved it—the carefree child in the back of a station wagon, the daughter sitting beside her mother on a Sunday afternoon, and the person I am today, carrying those memories forward.
For me, John Denver's music has become more than a collection of songs. It has been a quiet companion through the changing landscapes of my life, gently reminding me that while time moves on, some things have an extraordinary way of bringing us home.
