Jul
3
2008
Music
Author: Steve Martin
We are on our way up to Idaho for the 4th of July weekend. My wife is driving and her sister Jessica is sitting shotgun. The kids are watching Alvin and the Chipmunks for the 1,000th time with their headphones on. I am in the back with Abby trying to get some work done along the way. I put my headphones on and set Windows Media Player to random. It randomly picked an album that I haven’t listened to for many years. It is the album “Love Among the Ruins” by 10,000 Maniacs. This was their first album after Natalie Merchant left them.
Anyway, listening to it brought me back about 10 years and flooded a bunch of memories into my mind of Europe. While attending college, some friends and I took about a week off and headed to . Germany and France. The trip was awesome. We rented a little VW Jetta wagon which held the four of us and all our gear just perfectly. We brought plenty of tunes including this album. I think it was fairly new at the time and so we listened to it a lot. Hearing it now is like going back in time.
It makes me realize that this life is short and we should try to create lasting memories and make the most of each day. Back then I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids so it was easy to make sure I was having fun and making my own memories. Now that I am married with 3 kids, I want to help my kids to have fun experiences that they can look back on throughout their lives. It’s funny because in the process of trying to create these lasting memories for my kids, I find that I am having just about as much fun and that I get to keep the memory too.
