Going Back

They say you can't go back; back to where, I wonder? Last week when I was shelving books, and other things at the library, I came across an old Linda Ronstadt CD - "Cry Like the Rain, Howl Like the Wind." I checked it out and started listening to it on the 5-minute drive between the library and my house.

The opening bars of the first song - you guessed it - took me right back. Back to our house at Rissington, on one of the farms we managed in New Zealand. I had the album on cassette tape (probably recorded from a CD I'd checked out of the Napier library.) We didn't have any close neighbors, so I could put the stereo speakers in the window and let Linda belt out her tunes while I gardened or if we had a barbeque. Or I'd put it into the kitchen boom-box and dance around while dinner was cooking.

I had no idea that any one else in the family remembered that album. Ty, I'm sure, would roll his eyes and sigh that I'm reliving his childhood and I should just embrace my middle age. Logan would probably just grunt. Evan immediately started warbling one of the songs. But then, he and I spent a few years stealing Garth Brooks CDs from each other and listened to Celine Dion on our trip across America, so it figures he'd remember Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville singing "Don't Know Much."

There is some truth to not going back. Now when I hear those songs that sent me pirouetting around the kitchen I hum along. I seem to be saving my dancing for when Rowan and Katie visit and we boogie after bath time.

But a little trip down memory lane is sweet all the same.