For Contest - "Introduce Yourself"

Music has been the thread that has bound my patchwork life together since I was a little girl. My family moved so many times that it seemed the only thing that I could count on to stay the same was the music blasting from our turntable or the car radio. Songs from the Eagles, or the Steve Miller Band were my blessed assurance that all would be okay in each new town, each new home.

I have spent much of my adult life trying to put my gypsy childhood behind me. I married a boy who came from a very stable family and tried to live like real people; going to church, giving baby showers, actually becoming a member of a lovely community that took me in and never treated me like the outsider I still felt I was.

Almost seventeen years of living life so very differently from how I was raised has not erased where I come from, though. The years have not completely buried the one who was always the new girl in eighteen different schools. When those old songs pop up, I am transported back to where and who I was when I first listened to them. My body is taken over by the melodies and it feels like even my blood starts pumping to match the drumer's thumping beats.

Still today, at thirty-four, I feel calmed when I hear those old songs. I can sing every word to Jet Airliner, Desperado and so many more 70's classics.

With feeling.

Certain songs like Take It To the Limit and Band On the Run rush through me and leave me with the most incredible urge to hop in my car, roll the windows all the way down, turn the radio all the way up and find a highway that will never ever end.

My life is as close to perfect as I could have ever imagined. My husband and two children make my heart burst with pride. I love driving up our driveway and seeing the home that we have worked so hard to own. The solid, concrete foundation is one of my favorite things about our house. Most people wouldn't give the foundations under their homes a second thought, but for me, it is a symbol of permanence that I do not take lightly. I truly love that foundation and I always marvel at it and am grateful for it when I see it.

As much as I am enthralled with my life now and would never choose to abandon it, the hold those songs have over me is strong. Those songs must surely have a touch of magic in them to be able to spellbind me the way that they do. Or, maybe I just miss my gypsy days...a little.