Going Back in Time

“I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me!” I said to Chris when I got home Friday. “This CD is so going in my car!”

Let me back up a little.

I was driving Chris' car that day while mine was being serviced. I shot some commercials in Decatur that morning and was on my way to pick up Lily Baker at preschool. When I'm driving, I'm usually a talk radio kind of girl - news, sports, doesn't matter. But on this day, I wanted to hear some tunes and was scanning all over the radio trying to find something I wanted to hear. I came up empty-handed and decided to see if Chris had a CD in. He did and I hit play.

Oh my.

It was a CD full of songs from various artists circa ’97 or ’98.

That’s around the time that Chris and I started dating. Back when I was the weekend anchor at WHNT and Chris was playing for the Huntsville Channelcats. Our favorite TV show was Ally McBeal (it came on Mondays on Fox at 8 p.m. – how do I remember that??), we were addicted to the Game Show Network (at the time they only aired ‘70s game shows and it was worth watching for the bad clothes alone!) and our biggest decision was where to go eat after the hockey games.

You know how music from a certain time in your life just takes you back in time and makes you so happy? Let me tell you, I cranked that puppy up and rocked out the whole way back to Huntsville. I’m quite sure I busted a speaker in Chris’ car.

I eventually arrived at LB’s preschool and picked her up. As we pulled away, I turned the volume back up (not quite so loudly!) and listened to the songs. I looked in my rear view mirror and there was my Lilypalooza. She wasn’t even on my radar when these songs first came out. How could that be?

Life is all about stages. Each new chapter, each new decade, brings a new series of highs and lows. Each segment is perfect in its own right, and quite painful in another.

And sometimes, at the most unexpected moment, a song from “way back when” takes you back in time. And you remember how awesome that part of your life was.

Then you see your three-year-old daughter in the backseat. And you realize that this chapter is pretty awesome, too.