Fractured Fairytales

Good grief… Did you happen to notice the date of my last blog? I think that 2024 either flew in through a wormhole and upset the entire time-warp continuum or Father Winter just kicked my sorry soul into oblivion for fun. In either circumstance, I have been less than normal.
 
Have you ever had a moment when the inanest of dialogue, a song, taste, or a smell threw you into a daze? It happened to me last week.
 
Alexa was delivering a Mellow 70’s playlist when an old John Denver song started to play. Now, I have always enjoyed John’s music, but I would never call myself a starstruck fan. If I was going to spend one of my hard-earned quarters on the jukebox, this song would have never been a choice.
 
But on that day, Take Me Home, Country Roads sent a weird rush over me. I felt goosebumps tingle all over my body. I instantly stopped what I was doing to listen intently. Why? Exactly what button did it push?
 
I am sure you all know this song… “Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.” And I bet you all just sang that line as you read it too, right? Hard to just speak those forever famous words without some musical cadence.
 
But it was the refrain that seemed to hit me the most: “Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong…” Something tugged at my heartstrings, and I needed to know why.
 
It only took a single internet search to make butterflies land in my stomach like a 747 on a short runway.
 
This song was originally released as a single on April 12, 1971 – two weeks before my father died. I can only presume that I heard this song over and over again on the radio during one of the most difficult times of my life. Moments that I had forgotten.
 
Hindsight speaks to me so passionately. I believe my dad would have taken country roads home, and that heaven was the place where he belonged.
 
Our lives are truly fractured fairytales, aren’t they? It only takes a tiny nugget of truth to make our once-upon-a-time dreamscape come crashing to the sidewalk. When our stories come full circle, and enlightenment is upon us, perhaps we will understand it all.
 
I feel refreshed. Did the wormhole close? Or did Father Winter abandon his clutch? Ah, but that is fodder for yet another rant.
 

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