Lizzie regularly rocks out to music – pretty much standard for teens – but I mean she really rocks out … as in full-on Tom-Cruise-Risky-Business-sliding-across-the-floor dancing, often highly credible, quite dramatic lip synching and more than occasional high-decibel, Pat-Benatar –inspired belting out of, well, Pat Benatar.

This show appears nightly at our house, in our kitchen, while Lizzie does the dishes – a new and wonderful thing that simply happened.  Her job has always been to clear the table, but, of her own volition, she recently took on the larger task of loading the dishwasher, hand washing pots and pans, wiping the counters.  Color me amazed.  She now shoos us out of the kitchen, closes the door, cranks up Pandora and goes for it.  I sneak a peek at the show when I come in to make my post-dinner tea.  She used to stop dead when she saw me, embarrassed I guess.  But no longer.  I am even, sometimes, invited to join in.

I don’t know what makes me happier, her love of music, the power and fluidity of her movements, her willingness to let me in — or a clean kitchen.  But I am in heaven.  This latest turn of events also makes the realize how much music used to mean to me when I was her age, how central it was to my daily life, especially to my emotional life, how my day began and ended with music, how I tracked new releases, knew the lyrics to almost every song I heard on the radio, stood in line to buy the newest Stones album.  Back when vinyl was king and people still went to stores to buy music and horse-drawn carriages crowded the cobble-stone streets.  Music was (I’m pretty sure this is a cliché) the soundtrack to my life.

Listening to Lizzie’s soundtrack – in the kitchen, in the car, everywhere she is and whatever else she is doing — has brought me back to those days.  And it feels good.  Uh. You know that it should.

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