May 19, 2017

Me

Strawberry Hair

A long time ago I studied languages in Europe. French, Italian. Spanish. So much romance! I was a fearless traveler. I dressed so I could jump over fences and run from bad guys. Here I am, 19, on a balcony overlooking Aosta, a small town in Northern Italy where I was a gymnastics coach for the local team. Being an athlete, and able to speak several languages, I was a confident teen and twenty-year-old. But I also spent a lot of time singing to myself as I walked through the streets. I made up melancholy songs--I remember some of them still.

Funny how things move in circles.

Many years later I have a daughter who is that same age. And she and I are alike in many ways. Last summer, at 19, she bought a ticket to Europe, and traveled there alone, with her red ukelele so she could sing to make money, or sing to make people feel happy, or sing when she felt lonely. She drank a lot of coffee, and met a lot of people, and came home and wrote a whole bunch of songs. Strawberry Hair is one of them, and it's sort of her story and my story wrapped into one. We all get wrapped into each other. I love that about family, about friends, about community.

How all of our stories are intertwined...

Cheers, friends!