Funny how a melody...

I came home today with the intention of changing into some well worn jeans, a comfy sweater and heading to my favorite coffee shop to read the afternoon away. Life has a funny way of changing by its virtual state of being and I find myself here doing a bit of writing while listening to the music of my childhood and younger years. So many memories and times a simple song can summon to mind. Years seem to roll back and I can literally see in my mind's eye the different places I grew up and the many faces of the boy that eventually became this man.

So here I sit, in a pool of nostalgia pondering my latest conversation with my Dad. While it may not always be easy for him to share his feelings with me, the son most like him that he has, each year that has gone by has brought us closer to each other. While he can still infuriate me to no end (and I him, surely) we have found our voices and in the years we have left are taking that walk together where we can relate to each other as men. I have so much I can learn from him, but am also learning that he also gains much from me in our exchanges. We have come a long way from where we were and for that I am forever thankful.

Another song plays, this one the tune that imprinted itself in my head when I graduated from Navy Recruit Training Command. My parents, siblings and boyfriend Chris had made the journey to Chicago to see me Pass In Review and it came on the radio as we were driving back to the base to say our final goodbyes before I shipped out to Submarine School in Groton, CT. It got stuck in my head and heart and held me over on so many lonely and homesick nights when all was dark and I had nothing but the sea to haunt me of days gone by. I wandered the earth for a few years after I got out of the Navy and this song always took me back home, even if but for a moment, I was back in that Suburban with all the people in the world that I loved. It gave me hope that one day, some day, I would see them again.





Strange the things that music can do to us. I find myself just rambling now, but I am okay with that. My mind is just drifting in its own way down the paths of all those years. Place in this world I have been. Faces met, known, loved and forgotten float to the surface. Some names I can grasp, others no more than a familiar smile and they are gone. I told my sister about the song in one of my letters and sure enough, the single showed up one day for me at mail call. Man, all those letters they wrote. Pictures from home. Baking cookies for my whole division at RTC so they would have something home made on such an important day. All the name of guys with no family I would send my Dad and the letters he would write to them and the way their heads would jerk up when they heard their named called out during Mail Call. Man...time just keeps rolling back.

All those years at sea...nothing but my inner thoughts, the open sky and water from horizon to horizon.

I am starting to realize my mileage is not getting lower and time and tide wait for no man.

All this from a couple melodies and words and now it is time to cook dinner. I'll be back.

I always am.

daemon