Thomas and I often remark on how odd it is that people who talk with British accents sound American when singing. He showed me a clip of Elton John talking and then singing and I told him about an old association I have with one of his songs. I thought I would memorialize the memory. So, welcome to this weird post.
When I was about 6 years old, my family moved from Utah to Massachusetts. We were from MA, but had lived in Utah for two wonderful years. My parents were teachers and taught at the school on a military base. The base did weapons testing and was very small and very isolated. That is where I went to Kindergarten. When we moved, it was to the very large (to me) town of Taunton. We lived in an apartment there for several months. Due to overcrowding, my brother Kevin, who is only 18 months older than me, and I were sent to two different schools. We got there in the middle of the school year and I felt lonely and scared, going to a giant school all by myself. I hated it.
There is a song that brings back the vivid emotions I experienced while living in Taunton. It is "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John. That song was released in 1973; I was in first grade in 1983, so I am not sure why it was playing on the radio, but I can remember hearing that song playing in our kitchen as I was getting ready to go to school and feeling a giant pit in my stomach. Today, whenever I hear that song, I still feel slightly sick. There is another song called, "The Song Remembers When" that captures the sentiment of how a song can take you back to a very specific memory and for me, it is Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. There are other songs associated with better memories, like "Before He Cheats" being played when Luke was born, which makes me laugh because it is the opposite of sweet and sentimental and what you would want to associate with giving birth. But, the most vivid, even after almost 40 years, is "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." I don't hear it very often, but when I do, I am transported back to the feelings of helplessness I experienced as a sad six year old, standing in her kitchen and feeling completely despondent at the thought of going to school.
I don't think we lived in Taunton very long, but my memories of that time are sad. There was a day when I was sitting by myself in the giant lunch room and I just started crying. A teacher came and asked if I was sick and I nodded. She brought me to the nurse, who called my dad. My dad immediately came and picked me up. He could tell right away that I was not sick, but he was sympathetic and took me home for the day, stopping for ice cream on the way. As an adult, I am sure now that the feelings came from moving from a very small, very secure environment to a large town full of uncertainties. I also remember my parents fighting a lot during that time (my mom didn't want to move) and I am sure that contributed. No one was mean to me, I just felt alone. Poor little Kori.
We eventually moved to a house near my grandmother in Dartmouth, MA. I went to a normal-sized school that my brother also attended. We lived next to a giant forest where Kevin and I would spend many unsupervised hours getting lost, wandering streams and climbing trees (the 80s truly were a great time to be a child).
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