Day 27: Music

Can I admit to being in love with David Archuleta's single "Crush"? It makes me feel so happily seventeen years old and longing for the glory days of the boy-band. (Ah, 98 degrees, where did you go?)

Music is an incredibly powerful thing for me--I associate memories with it just as much, if not more, than other senses like sight or smell. I was lucky that I grew up in a home that had lots of music--the Carpenters, Roger Whitaker, Billy Joel. Either there was music on or my mother was singing. Maybe that's why my brain learned to hard wire those sounds to different memories. In the 5 years that we've been married, my (fabulous) husband has also made me yearly soundtracks to our life--songs that bring back the memories of that particular year. I LOVE that. Truthfully, if I ever do manage to write a book, be on the lookout for the soundtrack to it, because, for me at least, I know there will be one.

Tonight's sketch are songs that, for me, bring up memories. (I'd love to hear some of yours, if you have them.)

• How to Save a Life by The Fray : 4 months of bed rest in 2006
• You'll Think of Me ("Take your cat and leave my sweater") by Keith Urban: morning sickness (It still makes me queasy just to hear it. No joke.)
• The Smoothie Song by Nickel Creek : driving in our Blue Altima through the canyons of eastern Utah/western Wyoming when we moved to North Carolina.
• Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen : Seven Peaks Water Park, 6th grade, on the lazy river
• I Want it That Way by the Backstreet Boys : I think about trying to jump through the entire song as an Especially for Youth Counselor in 1999 and feeling cool and pretty for the first time in my life.
• Lemon by U2: My introduction to U2 as a band, this song from high school puts me in the backseat of Marianne Power's old Nova as the cool girls in the front seat rocked out.
• Ordinary Love by Rascall Flatts : This one reminds me of the fall that I got engaged to my first fiance, a whole different story, and driving to pick up my wedding dress.
• Everything You Want by Vertical Horizon : a bend in an on ramp in Los Angeles on the I-5, late at night when it was empty. (This song is a good one for that whole period of my life.)
• Make Me Lose Control (turn the radio up, for that sweet sound...) by Eric Carmen : All of a sudden, I'm 8 years old again and riding the incredibly thrilling roller-coaster "COLOSSUS" at Lagoon with my dad and feeling so proud of myself for being the only kid brave enough to go with him.
• Jump for My Love by the Pointer Sisters : my 7th birthday and some girls in the street doing a clogging routine to this song.