Have you ever experienced something that is so intertwined with specific music, that you feel as if you have a soundtrack to that chapter of your life? It happens to me all the time.

I went digging through my massive CD collection today, searching for my copy of Le Nozze di Figaro so that I could snag a few songs off of it, turn them into Mp3s, and give them to a new friend of mine. In the process of looking for that CD, I found the soundtrack to ‘You’ve Got Mail’. Suddenly my mind started replaying the music on that CD from memory, along with snapshots of what has been imprinted on my mind along with that music memory. I’ve listened to that CD a great deal, many things have happened while listening to it, but nothing has replaced the memories associated with the first time I bought that CD.

It was the summer of 1999. I was fourteen years old. And I had a bad case of puppy-love.


In this particular memory, I also happened to be in Florida with my father. He was there for a business trip, I was there to see Nate. I had first met Nate when I was twelve, living for a short time in northern Italy. Both of our fathers were in the Air Force, both of whom were working at the same NATO base in Aviano. Convenient, don’t you think? He was tall, blonde, rather thin, and at the time, I thought he was very charming. He was also fun to be around. Eventually, we both left Italy; I returned home to Tucson, he and his family moved to the panhandle of Florida. By 1999, I was living in Virginia, and I missed Nate. Over the years, I had become convinced that I like-liked Nate, but it had been so long since we’d seen each other. So I accompanied Dad on a business trip that was conveniently scheduled for the same area as Nate’s current place of residence.

The trip was alright. At the time, I loved it. We went to the beach, I spent time getting to know his family. Although, honestly, in retrospect I think I ended up being more enthralled with his father than with Nate. No, not enthralled in that sense, I just liked his Dad and thought he’d be fun to have around as a father-in-law type (I was a weird 14-year-old, so just don’t even ask.) Actually, I really should have been ticked off with Nate – the last day of the trip he kind of stood me up. But anywho.

I returned to Florida again a few months later, this time in the Fall. Mom and Steve came along too this time. Actually, I think it was the last “family vacation” we ever went on. It was on this trip that I bought the You’ve Got Mail soundtrack. I listened to it a lot. It touched on a lot of what my little romantic, imaginative fourteen-year-old heart wanted; dreams, happiness, security, romance. And it did so in that happy bubble-gum Nora Ephron kind of way, where you know everything is absolutely implausible, but dang you really want it anyway. (Of course, I can’t say that my eighteen-year-old heart doesn’t want that still.)

That trip was better than the first. Not because Nate was any more attentive; far from it, actually. But I got to explore. I remember distinctly going to Seaside, Florida with Mom and Nate one day. Seaside’s where they filmed the Truman Show. I actually wouldn’t have known about it, had my then-co-editor of the Daily Prophet told me all about it. Turns out her family also owns half of it and she used to live there. (If you’ve ever been to Seaside, you’ll know how impressive that is.) It was great. It took about 45 minutes to drive to Seaside, and it was such a picturesque drive. I remember the conversations we had, I remember that we listened to Elvis, Sarah Vaughan singing ‘Key Largo’, and the You’ve Got Mail soundtrack. Driving along the coast, looking out over the water, sitting in the backseat of that Dodge Neon with Nate. Then, spending the day exploring the quaint cuteness of Seaside, plotting in my head how wonderful it would be to live in one of those cute little houses, spending my days biking out to the white-sand beaches, stopping by the cafe where Truman worked to pick up some swanky sandwiches. It was indeed a lovely, albeit implausible, dream.

I can’t help but think about Nate, Seaside, and the whole Florida adventure whenever I hear that CD. It’s become a soundtrack to a period of my life; a period that I remember so detailed that I even remember conversations, what shows Steven and I watched in the hotel room, what Sujit and I joked about online, what we did to keep ourselves occupied. Nate stood me up again on that trip, so Mom ended up suggesting we buy a box of Godiva, go out to the beach, sit in the sand, watch the sunset, and go mad eating chocolates. It was a great trip, and even the then disappointing bits have turned into happy memories.

That happens to me with a lot of songs. Does anyone else do that, or is it just me? Other songs link to other things – The Prince of Egypt soundtrack reminds me of a huge Lego town I built just before I found out we’d be moving from Sierra Vista to Virginia; anything by Badly Drawn Boy reminds me of when I broke up with my last boyfriend way back in June, although it seems like it was even longer ago than that; Sade’s music reminds me of my good friend David; “I do” by Jude always makes me think of Simon, all the great conversations we had, and how great and how awful MIT was. Do you have any music memories? Please, post a comment and share them. I’d like to know if I’m not the only one with this odd habit. 🙂