Glycerine

All it takes is a few chords of a guitar and I’m taken back to high school.
Sitting in the quad, looking at the stars in my grandpa’s old truck.

Hanging out on a Friday, tagging along with someone to be at a cooler place and pretending for a night I belonged.
A concert I went to with friends, giant cell phone tucked safely in my cargo pant pocket, coolest shirt I owned on me as we sat on the far side of the stage and drank in Bush, smelling pot and sweat fill the arena.

Halfway through the concert, there was a long pause… and there he was.
Lit in blue, our view a profile as he sang my friends and I a love song.

Gavin Rossdale writes songs and doesn’t always have a straightforward meaning to them. Sometimes the words just fit and you would sing along even though they didn’t mean anything to the lyrics preceding it.

“Bad moon white again, bad moon white again as she falls around me…” Of course I always sang that “Better move away again… as she falls around me” so even I had a different view of what was being said.

The song was like my life- sometimes poetic, sometimes a jumble of emotions and events that have no linear purpose in my life.

“You’re never alone, you’re alone all the time…” rang true- in a busy life of color guard, Girl Scouts and etiquette classes I knew many people, but only got to be friends with a few, Friday nights home.

“It might just be clear, simple and plain, well, that’s just fine, that’s just one of my names…” I didn’t fit any of the molds I was put in, fully. I could have been anything, but I was me the first.

But the people I did hang out with, an eclectic group, loved the song as much as I did.

Peter in full Crow makeup standing in the school hallways late one afternoon killing me softly with this song on an acoustic.

Singing along as I drove, or my words echoing in the bathroom.

And now?

The song slows me down. for just over 4 minutes, years slip away and it is just myself again. Not mom, not wife, not laundry.

Just me.

Mostly in the car, driving, my local station coming in just a little fuzzy. I roll down the sunroof and breathe out.

Even when my friend covered it at a gig, I still sighed and enjoyed the half-hearted rendition of someone who knew the words but didn’t live them as I did.

It takes me back to a time when I was trying to figure myself, and always reminds me that I haven’t figured myself out, still, that I am ever changing.

That the world is beautiful and raw, sometimes jumbled words strung along, sometimes poetic and scenic.

And to enjoy each day, … “Don’t let the days go by…”

This post was inspired by a topic in this weeks Mama Kat’s writing workshop.

When you were in high school what was your favorite song? What did it mean to you then and what does it mean to you now?