I am feeling nostalgic.
Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past with its happy personal associations or memories.
It is not about being morose or clinging to the past when we were young, had lots of hair and wore shoulder pads.
No, it is just a pleasant, temporary visit down memory lane.
The year was 1971 and I was not in the greatest place emotionally as my first love had dumped me, swearing he still loved me but couldn’t handle my volatile emotions!
Hey, I was young. What did I know about love and all the messy baggage involved with being in a relationship?
But Carole King knew.
That was the year her chart-topping album Tapestry was released. The album cover pictured Carole from Brooklyn sitting on her window seat in her newly-acquired Los Angeles home with her cat on her lap. She was wearing the requisite bellbottom jeans and her naturally curly hair which became her trademark.
She had embarked on her own at age 29 after a marital breakup and recorded the album with all her own original songs on it.
She had written her first hit at the age of sixteen. Who doesn’t remember, It Might As Well Rain Until September.
She was brilliant and she got me. In fact she understood an entire baby boomer generation.
From I Feel the Earth Move to You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman. She nailed it.
It’s Too Late and So Far Away spoke directly to our broken hearts.
You’ve Got a Friend gave us hope.
Beautiful empowered us.
We were not alone as Carole had our back.
As she and I sang in the same key, I would belt out So Far Away to any unsuspecting audience. I knew the lyrics to every song on the album. To sing along brought me comfort in the fact that I could face the world with confidence.
So you can imagine what a thrill it was for me to attend the musical Beautiful about Carole and her music at the Arts Club in Vancouver recently.
A musical, nostalgic trip through my childhood, adolescence and the precipice of adulthood.
I highly recommend you see it as it’s still playing.
Speaking of nostalgia, let me share parts of a column I wrote over ten years ago called Bless This Grand Biological Clock.
It is the first sunny spring day in Vancouver and…
From my comfortable vantage point I can watch the world go by….a city alive with noise and energy and colour.
And babies…
I see the cherubic, edentulous faces of their little ones. Some with smiles, oblivious of the turbulence of life which awaits them. Others asleep without a care in the world.
I am tempted to reach out and tweak their chubby cheeks or tickle their toes. But I restrain myself. I want to pick up a young babe in my arms and cuddle it and make incomprehensible, infantile, cooing sounds at it as if it understands my divinely inspired communication perfectly.
I am suddenly filled with an unfulfilled longing and a yearning that I can no longer ignore.
I want to be a grandmother.
Neither of my daughters is interested in having babies. They have made it perfectly clear that motherhood is not on their agenda. Cats,yes. Dogs,very likely.
So fun to reminisce.
As you know, I had a granddaughter a year ago and now, this month, my other daughter has blessed me with a grandson.
He is perfect and has an outstanding name but I am sure Carole King would simply call him Beautiful.
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