Can You Take Me Back?...

I write about music a lot... but as you probably surmised, music is an important part of my life. And yes, I'm about to mention music again.

There are songs that are my parents' songs--songs that they enjoyed during my childhood, songs that they listened to and sang and hummed so frequently that they are interwoven into my life. These songs weren't my songs when I was a child, but they have become my songs by way of an inheritance--a gift of memories that my parents gave me that take me back to those years.

Ferrante & Teischer... Ray Conniff... Frank Sinatra... Perry Como... Dean Martin... Floyd Kramer.... Mantovani... these are some of the musicians whose songs were a part of the background music of my life. These are artists whose songs I still remember well, and now embrace because of the many memories their songs bring forth.

Ultimately, we are the sum of our memories--and music is often the catalyst that initiates a flood of memories. Perhaps that's why I so love Christmas songs; the thousands of cherished memories that a Christmas song can unleash are so remarkable that the music is perhaps the most joyful I can imagine.

Like many of you perhaps, I would gently mock my parents' taste in music when I was younger. Little did I know that they were sharing with me a heritage that I wouldn't fully appreciate until decades later. Did their parents do the same with them?...