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It Was a Very Good Year
Frank Sinatra
Nothing But the Best
2008

Summer vacation was (is) time spent outside, tanning without realizing it, sitting under trees and looking up from my book to notice the contrast of vibrant green leaves against a robin's egg sky.

Vacation is a road trip or two.

I hated road trips when I was younger.  Trapped in the car for hours, the constant fear at the back of my mind that I just MIGHT have to go to the bathroom (WHAT THEN?!  My father didn't make pit stops), the irritation of being subjected to my dad's choice of music (when all I wanted to do was put on my headphones (I remember them distinctly--some cheap pair; the band was a thin piece of metal and the ear phones were small, round pieces of black foam) and listen to my tape player).

I remember, on one particular drive to North Bay (my dad would drop my mom, my brother and I there for a few weeks every summer.  As you know, I have really fond memories of the time I spent there--surrounded by forest; with a backyard pool; a tree house; with my cool older cousins, Lisa and Sara; and with my favourite aunt and uncle.  My dad didn't stay all that long--a few days, a week at most--and would make the drive back to Montreal (or on to Toronto) on his own.  At the time I thought it was because he had to work--which was true, in part.  I think it was a vacation for him--a kind of break from having a family) my dad was very eager to share the music he was interested in at the time.

During the drive I am thinking of, it was Frank Sinatra.

At the time, Frank's smooth baritone did nothing for me.  It was a pesky irritant--the opening of "It Was a Very Good Year" made me cringe.  It sounded old-fashioned and simultaneously sad and schmaltzy.  My twelve-year-self ridiculed the song mercilessly, mocking the lyrics, making up my own.

I quite like the song now; it is still sad, but a sad that I can understand.  I like the way the music shifts throughout--the little flourishes and changes that correspond to moving from one age to another.  I wish I hadn't given my dad such a hard time.  Now, factoring in my own experience, I know that he was sharing a part of himself via the music he chose to play on the stereo, in that car, on that trip.  But, in all fairness, I was twelve and I had what was probably Dance Mix '93 to listen to.