Your Song, Our Song The Power of Music
By Megan Hudson
Music swirled about the house, as it always did on such workdays. Your Song by Elton John pulsed softly out of the Sonos speaker, its piano and string notes a warm blanket on my shoulders. Songs like these, which so often served as a backtrack for my mother as she worked creating floral arrangements, will always remind me of home. One afternoon as I helped my mother prepare for her umpteenth wedding as a florist, I asked her what her favorite song was. She turned to me with an exaggerated smile on her face.
“Megan, I could never choose! You know that.”
“You have to think!” I pressed. “Maybe you can make me a playlist of all your favorite songs instead.”
Months later, on a drive back to my home of Wellesley, Massachusetts on the last day of freshman year, my mother finally completed her playlist. I gazed silently out the window, despondent, tears springing to my eyes reminiscing on a year filled with fond memories. “Megan,” my mother exclaimed, “that time you asked me to make a playlist for you — I did it. I have all the songs in my notes. You just have to help me put them into a playlist.”
We spent the rest of the car ride crafting a playlist simply titled “favorites.” The playlist, 105 songs long, has become one of my most beloved compilations to listen to when I am missing my mother. Every song has a story, each of which was explained to me in vivid detail as we crossed state lines, back to my childhood home. The stories, to me, were fascinating. Memories of songs my mother listened to during late-night study sessions in graduate school, focused beneath a dimmed reading light, sleep-deprived with a calculator in hand. The song she listened to when she got the phone call that her surrogate was pregnant with two babies — a miracle to have twins when all her life she believed she could never be a mother. Songs that remind her of her parents I never had the privilege of meeting, and songs that sound like her brother who passed away a few years ago.
During that five-hour car ride, I learned more about my mother than I could have imagined. I was provided a time machine; I could peer back into her high school dances, travels abroad, post-work bar trips, and family dinner table conversations. Music is truly an incredible way to connect. It is a vessel through which we can empathize and resonate with another person, an incredibly important skill to possess. Getting to hear the music that has animated my mother’s life for years that day is a memory I truly cherish.
All of us have songs that we associate with specific, sometimes heart-wrenching memories. Perhaps a song reminds us of our elementary school coloring books surrounded by peeling crayons and fat markers, our first time on an airplane, or simply a person who seemed to leave our lives as easily as they entered it. I have learned that sharing these special songs with friends and family serves as an excellent way to connect and show a level of trust which cannot be communicated solely through words. A song can allow us to relive our beautiful memories over and over again.
We should all learn to utilize the magnificent strength of music. It can be used as a strategic tool to see and be reminded of the beauty which surrounds us in life. I associate music with all sorts of things and people — its ties to my mother and I’s relationship is only one example. Music has granted my life a sort of animated color, and when shared, has allowed me to see the color animating the lives of others, too.
As I sit here writing this article, I am, of course, listening to my mother’s “favorites” playlist. Though we are roughly 300 miles apart at this moment, I can feel her warmth when I listen to Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. I see her dancing around the kitchen, baking banana bread with sprinkles of chocolate chips in the soul-filled notes of Midnight Train to Georgia. I can hear her singing, gasping with delight and turning up the radio when I hear Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. And when I cannot sleep, I close my eyes to Your Song, the song that will always make me feel as though my mother is right there with me.
My gift is my song and this one’s for you
And you can tell everybody this is your song
Elton John
