Apologies to my mother

Once upon a time when I was a teen, I ruled the radio in the family car. I would sit in the passenger seat switching from station to station until I found a song I wanted to hear. I'd crank it up and I'd sing it loud. In those days, learning the words to every song in the top 2o and retaining those lyrics forever was so easy and it felt like common sense. I knew the words to every song after I heard them just a couple of times. All of my friends did.

My mother, however, did not.

Every once in awhile I would grant my mother the opportunity to hear a song from her younger years. She'd try sing along- off key, sure, but that's not what bothered me. Somehow, someway, she never knew the words to any of the songs; not even the ones she claimed were her absolute favorite. To my developing mind, this was completely inconceivable. How could anyone not have the words to their favorite songs etched inside their brain?

And she paid for her crime. I would roll my eyes at her and hiss through my teeth. I would berate her for being a "dork". Sometimes she would defend herself, sometimes she'd tell me about what certain songs meant to her, and she always claimed that she had a beauty-full voice when she was a child... (My mother was from Manhattan). I didn't appreciate what she was saying. I was too busy being scandalized.

Fast forward 20-ish years. I'm in my kitchen, cooking and cleaning with the radio on. A song that isn't exactly from my top 20 driven years, but definitely a part of my childhood starts to play. It is a song I'd easily sung a thousand times before. In fact, I had carefully copied the lyrics to this song on pink paper and they hung in my locker throughout high school. I'd studied the lyrics and tried to imagine what they meant and how they fit into my life. It wasn't my favorite song, but it was one that I took as seriously as teens tend to do.

And there, alone in my kitchen, I missed one word, and then another. And then came the chorus and I didn't remember all the words to it either. Who forgets the words to Rush's "Freewill?" Maybe it is because I haven't listened to the song 20x a day in years, or because age has started to erode my once lyric-friendly head, or maybe I just have more important things to think about. Maybe there are just too many words to that damned song. Who knows?

But I do finally understand another piece of my mom. Unfortunately, these things always seem to occur to me too late.