A Music Bath

                Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body.” So this is my conversation with you as I bathe in music. As I sit here, I am listening to Pandora internet radio. It occurs to me that music is such a big part of some people’s lives. Most people have a favorite song or band. Little kids learn lessons through song, or watch shows/movies with music because it keeps their interest more than just words. I wonder why that is. I know virtually nothing about psychology and childhood development, but there has to be some reason children focus on music more. But from a general standpoint, it’s interesting. There is always that one song that every person remembers from their childhood. It may be a potty training song, a television theme song, or simply the itsy bitsy spider. The really great thing is that whether they mean to or not, parents will eventually sing their favorite songs to their children. That is how so many songs have stayed around for so long. There are exceptions though. For example, my parents didn’t sing the same television theme songs because they didn’t watch the same shows. There is even a difference between me and my little sister. Though, interestingly enough, I know the songs from her childhood as well as mine. It is also interesting how our parents’ musical preference shapes our own later in life. That is not to say that you will listen to your parents’ favorite music when you grow up, but that it will ultimately play some part. In an episode of Criminal Minds I recently saw, they discussed the age at which children started listening to what their friends liked instead of what their parents liked. This made me think because, just like those childhood songs, do you ever really forget the music you listened to as an adolescent? When I was younger, my grandmother listened to country music and Elvis. She had more favorites but those were the big ones. 

To this day, I do not like Elvis but love country music. However, I love the country music of that time frame. I am not a big fan of older country and rarely find the time to listen to newer country. So does that mean I am not a true country fan? The same can be said for 60’s music. In my early teens, my mother would constantly play her Spirit of the 60’s album. I grew to know the songs and even enjoy them, but if I hear other music from the 60’s I can’t say I enjoy it. So I don’t know what causes a person to like the music they end up enjoying, but I think your parents’ tastes play into it. If you were to look at my music library, you would find Melissa Etheridge, Alanis Morissette, Jewel and some 4 Non Blondes thanks to my mother’s tastes. You would also find older Tim McGraw, Dolly Parton, Etta James, and Bob Segar since those were played by my grandmother. And you would find my father’s influence as well in my collections of Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Aerosmith. Yet my music library goes further. I do not know if this happens to everybody, but I have found that I have picked up new music from every person in my life. I have very eclectic taste, if you couldn’t tell. And most of the time I just play all my music on shuffle because I am not big on the same thing for long periods. There are, of course, certain songs/genres that I play at certain times. For example, Miles Davis relaxes me while 90’s hip hop makes me smile. Over the course of my life I have picked up more and more music. I can probably tell you where I got each one from too. As I have been typing this I have listened to Parachute, Aerosmith, Flo Rida, The Sugarhill Gang, Christina Aguilera, Frank Sinatra, and a song from The Little Mermaid. And yes, I listen to Disney music on a regular basis even though I am in my mid twenties. I don’t love all music but I am always willing to try new things.

 I think that music is the basis of everything. Friedrich Nietzsche once said “without music life would be a mistake.” I believe this one hundred percent. There are songs that are associated with movies, commercials, a place, a person, a moment, or even a feeling. Everybody has a favorite song that they will enjoy no matter what their mood. (Mine is Hotel California by the Eagles) Or a favorite band that they love to listen to all the time. (Mine is Aerosmith, old and new) There is a reason people put thought into things such as a graduation or wedding song. These are songs that you will associate with that moment forever. Even if a marriage doesn’t last, the song will always be associated with it. Music has meaning for everybody and can simply entertain at the same time.

 I highly recommend listening to music as much as humanly possible; it’s good for the soul. I once read a quote that said “music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life” (Berthold Auerbach). So take a music bath. Try a new genre, or just enjoy one of your favorites. Think about when and where you fell in love with music you choose to listen to. Or simply sit and absorb the sound and feeling of your favorite song. Either way, turn on some music and wash away some dust. 

My Angels

       Now comes the post that is the hardest to write; the reason I went backwards instead of starting at the beginning. It is also the reason that I have been away. I am going to split this into two parts and build up the courage and strength to write it. So first, let me say that this week has been great. There has also been an air of sadness thrown in as well. This past Friday would have been my grandmother’s 70^th birthday. As I told you when I started this series of posts, I began with birth and would end with death. My grandmother was a wonderful woman who was a significant part of my life. For many years, it was just her and I. This is not a dig against either of my parents; it just is the way it is. She was an incredibly strong woman, and if you have read any of my past posts you will know that she passed away a few years ago. She was and will always be in the hearts of her family and we miss her every day. So Friday was an especially sad day. But my aunt likes to say that she is her guardian angel, watching us as we go through life. I just hope she is proud of what she is seeing. And I also hope that her latest company is proud too.

                This past December, we lost somebody close to us. It wasn’t a distant family member, and it wasn’t somebody easily missed. We lost my mother. I have been trying to come up with a way to write about her, and I still don’t know what I am going to say. It has taken so long to come back to writing because this is a post that needs to be written, but it is a very hard one to write. What child is ever ok when they lose their mother? My grandmother has been dead for almost 5 years and most of my family is still not ok with it. It was the first time I have ever seen my father cry and he is the strongest man I know. The same can be said for my mother’s side of the family. It is a very rare thing to see my Grandma cry or even extremely upset. She is another very strong woman, and this devastated her. As is to be expected, because no parent should have to bury their child. But my mother had some problems. After a lifelong battle with her issues, she lost the war. And in that moment, we lost her. I don’t want to say that this was harder on any one person in our family. Everybody mourned her loss for a different reason. Her brother, who she was incredibly close with as a child, mourned the fact that they had grown apart. Her sister and other brother mourned the fact that no matter how much they tried, they couldn’t help her. Her extended mourned the fact that they hadn’t stayed in touch as much as they might have. Her mother mourned many things. She mourned the loss of her troubled child; a child who may have caused her some heartache over the years, but was none the less her child. And her ex husbands mourned for the woman they once loved, but mostly for the sadness each of their daughters would now have to face. And each of her children mourned the loss of their mother. Now please do not think that I know exactly what everybody is feeling. I am not that arrogant and do not believe I know everything. Every person experiences the same loss in their own way. These are just some ways I perceived them to have felt, maybe even just for a moment.

                My mother, like every human being, had her flaws. She may not have made the best choices all the time, but she stuck to her decisions with conviction. I don’t know much about her childhood, but I know it was a happy one. I know that she met my father at a young age and they were married right after she graduated from high school. They were happy for a time, and then they weren’t. I have seen home movies of my childhood where my parents are together and there was joy and laughter and more. As an older child, I didn’t see much of my parents, at least that I remember. But I always knew they loved me and they were always in contact with me. When I grew up a bit more, I went to live with my mom. By this time, my sister had been born and she was happy again with her second husband and child. (That is not to say she wasn’t happy with me at any point) I remember many great things. I remember her love for decorating on the holidays, her favorite season was summer, and she was a sucker for a rescued animal. Every Halloween we went all out and decorated our yard with spider webs, tomb stones, blood, lights, spiders, and more. Christmas was no different. We had big trees with lots of lights and different ornaments. There were Santas all over the house since she collected them. And her pride and joy was a ceramic village my grandmother had made herself. She loved that village and every year would lovingly put it up and place the little lights on the trees. And no matter how strapped for case we may have been, there were always presents under those trees. She also collected elephants and when the decorations came down, the elephants went back up. They were everywhere, and to this day nobody knows why she loved them so much.

                My mother had a habit of rescuing strays, and not just animals. If anybody ever needed a couch to crash on, hers was available. And she was constantly finding homes for battered and homeless dogs. We always had pets at my mom’s house. There were birds (which you can imagine I was not too fond of), rabbits, fish, cats and dogs. Though some of them may have been temporary, there were a few animals that never left her side. Zebo and Bear were our dogs and Bongo was our cat. Even though the animals belonged to us all, they were completely in love with my mother the most. And who could blame them? Her joy was infectious. She was always able to make the most of a bad situation. And her laugh was infectious. I remember so many times just sitting in the car and listening to her sing a song out of nowhere. She loved to dance around the house to loud music, or drive around with the top down in her little Geo Tracker. And she loved driving to Rhode Island and going to the beach. She was a fair skinned, blonde haired woman who loved the sun. As a little kid we were always hanging around at Grama’s pool. She was a fish, just like me. But her true love was the ocean. There was nothing better to her than sitting in the sand with the hot sun, cool ocean breeze, and a good book. As a child, those were the best memories of my life. But as is true with everything, things change.

                As I got older, my mother’s issues got worse. I am not writing this to bash my mother. And contrary to what people think, I have no real bad feelings towards her. I may not have agreed with her decisions, and we may have also grown apart over the years, but she was still my mother. I knew her better than anybody, and while we may not have been as close as we once were, I was the one person on this earth that she was closest to. So while I will not bash her, I will also not lie or pretend everything was perfect. We had our differences, and as I said, I disagreed with some of her choices. Towards the end of her life, she was not close with my sister at all. They did not speak for a few years, and I know this is something that upsets my sister now. I hope that she knows that no matter what happened my mother always loved her. And even though both were hurting by the separation, she understood why it happened. She was working, in her own way, to make herself better so that someday her youngest daughter could forgive her. And I am very please to say that in the last few months of her life, my mother mended many fences; one of which was the one with my sister. So my sister can grieve for her loss but know that in the end, they weren’t at odds and were, in fact, ok.

                I am not personally ready to write out my feelings of my mother’s death. I don’t know when I’ll be ready, or even if I ever will. I can say that I am angry, and hurt, and saddened by the whole situation. But I am comforted in the fact that I am not alone in my grief. I am also comforted knowing that through thick and thin, ups and downs, and everything we had ever been through, my mother was always there for me if I needed her. She loved my sister more than life itself and she loved me more than words could ever say. She was happy at the end, and she was pulling her life together. She left this world having made up with the people that she loved, and she was at peace with things. This has made it possible for those mourning to be at peace with her death as well. It is something that nobody will ever get over completely. But we will live our lives feeling lucky to have had a chance to have been a part of hers.

                

   

           

                                   

<3 RIP MOM <3

A Month Late and a Present Short

        This may seem crazy. You may read this and think that I am a little off my rocker. But that’s ok, I don’t mind. In this post I want to talk to you about Christmas. I know that it has passed and I am well aware that I was upset about its appearance in October. I very much believe that Christmas belongs in December and should never leave. There should not be decorations up in October, the stores should not play music is November, etc. I think that the music should be played after Thanksgiving and decorations should not be put up until December. In fact, when I was a kid our tree wasn’t put up until at least the second week of December; if not later. Having said that, I must confess that we put up my tree on the 1^st of December this year. In a few ways, I’m glad that we did, though I felt a bit like a hypocrite at the time. But that tree is one of the reasons for this post. I want to tell you about my holidays; Christmas and New Years.

                This Christmas was different for me in many ways. The first way being that it was the first Christmas where I did not travel to be with my family. My boyfriend and I visited our families the weekend before, but the actual holiday was spent at home. In fact, I worked on the morning of Christmas Eve. It was a nice quiet Christmas in our little apartment, just the two of us. We watch Christmas movies and just hung out. Our tree was also special to each of us for different reasons. For my boyfriend, it was the first real tree he had ever had. For me, it was the first Christmas tree I have had in about 5 years. Since I always traveled, it seemed silly to have a tree at home. And I personally hate fake trees. As a kid I always had a real one and thus never liked the fake one. As an adult, I understand the advantages of having a fake tree, and even considered getting one for our apartment. I wouldn’t have loved it as much as a real tree, but I would have been happy enough just to have one. For all its advantages though, a fake tree just wasn’t possible due to our lack of storage space. This is New York, and affordable apartments aren’t that big. So we bought a real tree on the street corner that was about my height (which is not tall at all), and bought a minimal amount of decorations. While the tree was not covered in ornaments, it was nicely decorated with lights, balls, bows, candy canes, and childhood ornaments of my boyfriend’s. We also got lights for the window, a Santa countdown from my childhood, and stockings with bells on them.  It may not sound like much, but it was perfect for our first Christmas at home.

                The reason that I am sharing this with you is that it was a significant event since I have been away. There isn’t much to say because this isn’t my normal holiday post. Maybe next year I will give you details about the holiday itself. But this year, things were different. I had fully intended on writing a great Christmas post but then there was a death in my family and I stopped writing all together. The holidays were not bad but the person we lost wasn’t distant and that made them (the holidays) a bit sad. Thus there was no Christmas post for you, and you have to read about it at the end of January. I will tell you more about the sadness in another post, but here I just wanted to tell you about my simple and sweet Christmas. I will also add that I had a relaxing New Years with just my Boyfriend as well. He was sick so we just watched TV and played board games all night. For me it was great because I am not the type to go out on the town. Given the choice, a simple night at home wins every time. So those were my holidays. I have a picture of my tree that I will share with you too. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and your new year is going well thus far. 

Sixteen Candles

                I hope you all enjoyed hearing about my little brother. Now as promised I will be moving forward, or I suppose backwards, with my posts. While the birth of my brother was huge, that day was already special for a very similar reason. It turns out that my two siblings have the exact same birthday, only 16 years apart. That’s right! My little sister turned 16 on the day that my brother was born. Technically, I should tell you they are both my half siblings. This is only in a technical sense though because my sister and I are extremely close. In this post, I am going to tell you all about my favorite sister. I will talk about some things she has been through, the person she has become, and things in her life. I will also put up lots of pictures that she may kill me for sharing, but as a big sister that is my job.

                Who is my sister? Well, Dakotah Taylor is an amazing young woman. She is my sister from my mother’s second marriage and was born when I was 9. As an only child, I tended to be a bit spoiled. But when I learned of my mom’s pregnancy I was excited in a way only a 9 year old could be. I was never jealous of a new baby or anything like that. I couldn’t wait for her to come. We put up wall paper in the nursery and set up her Winnie the Pooh crib to get ready for her. I cannot tell you much about the day she was born. That was 16 years ago and my memory is not that good. But I do know that I was allowed to go to the hospital to meet her the next day. I was recently sent a picture of me holding her, and when you see it you will notice the huge smile on my face. This little thing was my baby sister. A real baby, not a doll; though I’m sure my 9 year old brain wanted to play with her like one. She was a happy child. She was always full of energy and big smiles. And man was she a ham at an early age. When she started pre-school, a year early I might add, she was given the nickname Hollywood by her teachers. This little girl loved to be the center of attention, and had the air of a star. But she wasn’t just there for the drama. She was the smartest kid in the world. As I said, she started pre-school early, and once she got to regular school there was a discussion of whether or not she should skip a grade. We were all proud of her then, and that was just the beginning. 

                Dakotah has not had an easy life. She had lots of family that loved her, but things were not always that simple and she had to deal with things that a child should not have had to deal with. I am not going to air my family’s dirty laundry on the internet, nor am I going to broadcast the details of her life. But I will say that she has overcome many obstacles to be where she is right now. And those of us that know her could not be more proud of the person she has become. She is still extremely smart, incredibly beautiful, and will grow up to be something amazing. This is a fact I am sure of.

                Now I want to show you guys some pictures of my amazing sister. I have found a bunch and have picked out my favorites. I have tried to incorporate the important people in her life as best I can. There are pictures of her with each of her sisters (while I am the only one from her mom, he dad has 3 other girls – 2 older and 1 younger than Dakotah). There is one with her oldest sister Caitlin, her older sister Brittney, and her baby sister Madison. I should add that the love between Dakotah and Madison is the same as the love between Dakotah and me. Through circumstances beyond our control, each pair grew extremely close. Dakotah, while she loves all her sisters, would go to the ends of the earth for her little sister just as I would for her. There are also pictures of multiple generations and one of what was at one point her core family. Then I have added some from when she was small and one of her with her first love and current squeeze. The pictures show her progression from a cute smiley child to a beautiful young woman.

                So here are the pictures. And while this post may be a few days late, I just want to wish Dakotah a Happy 16^th Birthday. I am incredibly proud and happy to have her as a sister and I love her to pieces. Enjoy the pictures and stay tuned for more….

                  

 

                    

 

                   

 <3 I Love You Little Sister <3

New Post and New Baby

                Well readers, it has been a while. I apologize for my absence. My only explanation is that I have been dealing with life and have been unable, for a few reasons, to write. Now, however, I am going to try and write as often as I can. To start, I am going to take you through everything you have missed. A great deal has happened in such a short time that I will be unable to put it all into one post. I suppose I could try, but by splitting it all up I can elaborate and share the ups and downs with you. I have decided to work backwards time wise, though it may seem as though working forward in the cycle of life. Thus I will start with birth and end with death. Now let me tell you about Jackson Thomas. 

                This past week, I had one very good day. In that day I received a new pair of shoes, celebrated an important birthday (which will get its own post next time), and had a new member born into my family. Now why, you may ask, is that so important? People are born every day, and at my age one would assume it was a cousin, niece/nephew, or even a child of my own. Well, I can certainly guarantee that there will be no babies for me in the near future. And my sister is way too young to have a child. Thus I do not have a new niece/nephew. I also did not gain a cousin or anything else in my extended family. While I do absolutely adore my baby cousins, they are not the baby in the limelight. No, this post is for a baby in my immediate family: my little brother.

                I am happy to report that I now have a positively beautiful baby brother. I have always been Daddy’s little girl and have been his only child thus far. Yet in the past few years, he has been seeing a lovely woman on and off. Well, they recently moved south to start their own life together. They have gotten engaged and over the summer learned they were expecting a baby of their own. This would be her first child and his second. And I must say that they were both overjoyed with the news, as was everybody else in the family. I will admit that at first it was a bit of a shock. I am in my mid twenties and so to have a new sibling seemed a bit odd at first. After some time, though not too much, I became more and more excited. I could also tell how happy it made my father and his fiancé which made me happy as well. The last time I saw her was over the holidays. She was big as a house, which is not an easy feat for such a small woman. It may be a cliché, but she really was glowing. The two of them were eager for the arrival of their little bundle. It was partly to get the baby out of the belly, and mostly because they wanted to meet him. And while I know that my father would have been happy with a boy or a girl, we all know that he was extremely excited to have a boy. After all these years he was finally going to have a son. I should add that I was once told that I was supposed to be a boy and was even going to be a junior. Thus, I know he was happy to finally get a boy. Whatever the baby came out though, we would all love it; as can be seen by the explosion of love they have gotten.

                My little brother, named Jackson Thomas, was born after hours of labor. I do not know the details, nor would I like to if I’m being completely honest.  All that is important, all that anybody knows, is in the evening, a little boy was born. He was of average weight and average length, but he was loved beyond measure. There were many family members on both sides anxiously awaiting word of his birth. And once we knew he was here, everybody wanted pictures. Now, he is all over the internet because none of us could contain our joy. We wanted to share this beautiful little baby. Personally, I have been going crazy all week. The reason? I just want to meet the little baby!! Unfortunately, I live too far away for that to be possible at the moment; hence this long post. I just want to share my joy with the world, or at least the part of the world that reads my blog. This baby, though he has not met most of his family, is so abundantly loved.  So I am so excited that he is here, and I cannot wait to meet him! I am going to share some pictures so you can see for yourself how adorable he really is. Enjoy and stay tuned.