My Life Has Been A Tapestry
In 1971 my life expanded. I went to High School. That meant that new people were entering my life. Not everyone left an impression that I could discern, but one newcomer did in a way she never planned. She gave my best friend the album Tapestry for her birthday. I got an album of theme songs for my life thanks to her. Odds are I would have discovered Tapestry on my own, but that’s how it happened, sitting in my best friend’s room as she unwrapped her birthday presents. Each song has followed me and the“ever changing view” that is my life.
When I hear You’ve Got a Friend, in my head I always hear a blend of Carole King and James Taylor. For me, that song is about the friends I made while growing up. Mine fall into three categories. Kids from the hood, camp friends and friends in that after High School before the real world zone of college. Maybe it’s because they knew me when I was vulnerable, and awkward, and made bad decisions, but they still liked me. I’m a half a world away from most of them, and everyone is doing their own thing, but when I’m down and troubled and nothing is going right, I close my eyes and think of them as I’m belting out this song. In my mind their faces are frozen in time. Facebook may keep the ties intact but their profile pictures don’t seem to register in my brain.
A whole generation thinks Where You Lead is the theme song from Gilmore Girls. Proving that even when they are right, they are wrong. Where You Lead is the song I danced around the house to when no one was around and I needed to shake it off or celebrate. The song works either way. Only later in life did I find out that what I was doing was “dancing it out.” Gray’s Anatomy reference, watch some TV people!
Sometimes dancing alone didn’t cut it. Sometimes I had to wail which is not to be confused with actual singing. (You make me feel like a ) Natural Woman was the song I wailed to, and it was always joyful. I was wailing just now as I wrote the name of the song. How can you not love a song that uses parenthesis in its title?
When I was uncertain, this was my song. Did he like me? Would he call? Was I enough? Will my heart be broken? Until I found the one that loved me through a lot of tomorrows, I sang this song. Mostly quietly, with a few tears running down my face.
My life has been a tapestry made richer in color and texture because of this album. Listening to the songs now brings that tapestry of my life into focus where I can enjoy the patterns I wove into it as I still sing those same songs.
