I cry very easily these days. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with stress and the fact that my older baby boy is just a few months away from graduating and leaving home. Today I have shed tears while watching YouTube videos, while reminiscing with my wife, and while taking a walk.
This evening, the occasion has been listening to The Indigo Girls, the self-titled album from 1989. Part of the emotion comes from feeling my age a little bit recently, as well as the realization that it has been 30 years since these songs first changed my life. It is not an exaggeration to say that their music helped make me, a small-minded small town Republican teenager, into a much more open and tolerant adult than I might have been otherwise.
It’s also true that the music of The Indigo Girls was the soundtrack of my college years, especially of my relationship with my wife. One of my fondest memories is of listening to The Indigo Girls on my first, life-changing trip to San Francisco with Katie and her mom at Christmastime 1992. We were packed into the tiny front seat of a 1990 Nissan pickup for 700 miles, accompanied by Amy and Emily, Marc Cohn, Simon & Garfunkel, and a few other long forgotten tapes. (Remember those, kids?) My mother-in-law would have been 76 on Sunday and her absence inhabits some of my emotion as well.
The words to these songs bring my heart to the surface as well. The opening track on the album, “Closer To Fine,” is one of my favorite songs of all time. Its message of accepting life as it comes, of finding your own path without fear of getting it wrong, and of not forcing yourself into answers that don’t fit your life and circumstances only gets more poignant and appropriate as I get older. Another song, “Love’s Recovery,” could be the story of my life with Katie, particularly our sometimes rocky beginning together.
I don’t need all these reasons to tear up, of course; I do fine with all my other foibles and neuroses. However, I can’t think of a nicer way to spend an evening, crying.
Thanks for reading. I’ll try to do better next time.
