“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” —Plato

I can’t say enough about what music has, and continues to mean in my life. Having been raised a child of the 50’s where the TV was a constant companion, my earliest memory is sitting in front of it and watching “Your Hit Parade”, then there was “Sing Along with Mitch” and an untold number of shows that were either variety or music based. It goes on for over 60 years and to this day, music is that which centers me, allows me to feel happy, sad, hopeful, depressed, elated, and on and on. So it was that today, my treadmill journey (yes, folks another crappy weather day in lovely Fairfield County) began with the second half of what may be the best album of all time Layla! It provided the perfect cadence for running today and, since I was alone in my room with no one even on the same floor, I didn’t need a mask and was able to sing along loudly (and, yes, terribly off key). That part of the album was surprisingly short so I needed another to finish and quickly settled upon Trisha Yearwood’s album that shares its name with the title of this piece (actually the album title is what generated this particular title and series of thoughts). As I was listening to the title song (which conveniently opens the album) my mind took wings (thus the Plato quote above), and I started “thinking about…..”

Here are some of the “yous” I was thinking about:

• My incredible wife, partner in crime, partner in isolation
• My incredible fortune to have grabbed health by the throat and refuse to let it go, I can, and want to, be active, run, be relatively careful about what I eat, not so much about how much or what I drink, but there’s that…,my “medical pointers” being all in the good range, to actually enjoy walking Abbey THE dog when the weather permits.
• My kids: solidly ensconced in great marriages, with bright, active, healthy kids of their own.
• My luck at having a job that has never really been a “job”, it has been and continues to be, fun, uplifting and in these days of splendid isolation it reminds me even more how much I miss the day to day interaction with kids and colleagues.
• The beach and salt water, looking forward, maybe more than ever before to my first trip to it and diving in. How lucky was I to have been raised by folks who made it a place that was both a refuge and a “carrot”. The one time I struggled in high school the impetus that got me through was the fear of not being able to go to the beach that summer if I had to go to summer school…I worked my ass off and just made it, but I made it!!!
• The fact that I cannot see, hold, hug, touch, the aforementioned kids and grand kids for the time being and the fact that time is not on my side (you kinda don’t get that till you’re playing the back 9 of life and unlike Mini golf there is no “clown’s mouth” to get an extra free round, although if you look back at bullet #2, I did kinda hole one out in terms of health
• How dark and dreary always seems to be replaced by light and smiles.
• How much I wish I had an ounce of musical ability.

Well, those were just the things that crossed my mind as I was finishing up the treadmill journey so I wanted to jot them down…

The run concluded with the song “On a Bus To St. Cloud” sung with incredible emotion by Ms. Yearwood. it was a perfect way to end and really did give flight to the imagination.