Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!
I grew up with parents who loved Country Western music. I mean the twangier the better. I escaped as soon as I could, at the age of nine, courtesy of them gifting me my own little radio for Christmas. I found rock and forged my own path, because even at nine that was something I knew I needed to do.
To my mom's credit, she did attempt to learn and like some of my music. It wasn't easy. When I gave her my Christmas list in the early 1980s for bands like Journey and Air Supply, she would turn to my aunt wondering, "What's an air supply?"
One song, however, she absolutely fell in love with - and it had nothing whatsoever to do with me. She found it all on her own, working long hours at a convenience store, with a top 40 channel to keep her company. When I listen to the lyrics, I feel so sad that they resonated with her so strongly, because it really drives it home how lonely she was and how much she sacrificed to keep surviving somehow. After my dad died in 1980, leaving her alone to raise a pre-teen daughter, where she had to scrimp and manage all on her own with very little help, a working woman without a choice, with none of her own family around her to lessen the burden... it was a hard life.
This song reminds me of that. It makes me sad, so I don't listen to it very often. I can only hope that wherever her spirit wandered, she no longer has to wonder about any of these things... that's she's surrounded with the love and support she often didn't get in her life here on Earth.
Thinking of you, Mama. <3
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