Soundtracks

After a long, sad year-and-change with no live music, I got to go to a concert recently! Ani DiFranco and Indigo Girls took me right back to my twenties and made me almost nostalgic for disastrous dates, wild nights out with my friends, and late weekend brunches. Music is a huge part of many of our stories. What was playing when you were moving into your first apartment? When you fell in love? When your mom drove you around in a big old station wagon smashed together with your sisters and no seat belts? (HELEN REDDY - I AM WOMAN.)

Recently, I spoke with a 97-year-old woman who had heard “Only You” by The Platters about a month before I interviewed her. It had been one of her favorite slow songs in the 1950s, and was similar to the romantic songs to which she and her husband danced after his return from World War II in 1945. They had married in 1942, while he was on furlough, and then hadn’t seen each other for three years. While he was away, she had received a telegram saying that he was missing in action while fighting in France; she had to wait weeks to find out that he was injured but alive, convalescing in a hospital in England. When he finally got home, they were just elated to be together. They went dancing three nights a week to celebrate, “making up for lost time.” She taught him to jitterbug, which was loads of fun . . . but her favorite dances were the romantic songs. She reflected:

“That was a good time. I should remember those years. We enjoyed each other and we were happy. I just loved him. And I know he loved me because he treated me beautifully. I can think back that he never left the house without kissing me goodbye and saying ‘I love you.’”

The night she heard “Only You,” more than 70 years after the years of dancing three nights a week and more than 35 years after her husband’s death, she couldn’t stop smiling and singing it to herself.

Do you know your parents’ song?