How I Think About Music - Melody Cryns

Music is life. And music has been a part of my life since I remember.

I was only three when I yelled, “Peter Pan, come back, come back!” at the end of the old Mary Martin musical version of Peter Pan that appeared in black and white on the small-screen TV. We hadn’t even moved from Chicago to San Francisco yet back then.

My mother held me and assured me that yes, Peter Pan would come back and all would be well.
I remember how I sang along with all the songs that I’d heard ever since I’d been a baby when mom would fly me around and pretend I was Peter Pan – I’d yell the song, “I’m flying!!!!” and actually run around the room – and even sing the prayer Wendy, John and Michael’s mother sang for them at the beginning, “Tender Shepherd.” Then I’d march around to “I don’t wanna grow up, I don’t wanna go to school, and if someone tries to make me, I will break all the rules!”
When we had to clap to revive Tinkerbell, I clapped and I clapped so hard that my hands turned red, stomping my feet to the jingly music…

And, in the end, I’d shout and yell, Peter Pan, come back…because I never wanted Peter Pan or the music to leave…I wanted to remember it and keep the music in my heart forever, my first love…music. I heard it all around me, knew every musical jingle played on TV by heart. I believed in magic and that fairy dust really was magical…and I believed in music. I also believed that anything was possible…

And hearing the music all around me made me remember all the magic. I began pounding on the piano and picking out tunes at five, and when I was not quite seven, “they” arrived in our den on Second Avenue in San Francisco – on February 9, 1964, the Beatles arrived on the big screen black and white TV in our living room…me and my mom got so excited, stomping our feet, holding each other and yelling, “She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah!” over and over again…it was the first thing I remember having in common with my Mother, our love for the Beatles, for the music that lit up our lives and made us so happy…

So, the music surrounded me and while life happened and I went to business college so that I could always find a job because my mother freaked out when I told her that I’d like to start playing guitar on a street corner for a living because the people who did that looked happy, I never lost sight of music.

Years later, my kids and I would bounce down the road in an old car, listening to music blasting on the radio – maybe it was Led Zeppelin or Grateful Dead, or of course the Beatles. We all knew the songs by heart, the kids and I, even Megan who was so young back then. We would listen to music and talk about how some day we won’t struggle for money because I’m going to publish my book and we’d go on road trips and have a nice car…and I wouldn’t have to work and be away from home so much…life would be wonderful and we’d surround ourselves would music, and fairy dust still existed.

I had almost forgotten about that until just a couple of weeks ago when I became overcome with emotion at a workshop at a writer’s conference in New York – the one I go to every year with my daughter Megan.

What happened to the dream? When did the dream have to take the back burner? The kids are grown now…and the dream never happened and to this day I still struggle to make ends meet and worry over how much rent I’m paying.

But as long as I can hear the music, the dream still lives, but somehow I feel as if I disappointed my kids…I wasn’t able to show them that anything is possible.