A Day In the Life

It started long ago.

I was eight years old. It was dusk. It was twilight, the time just between the hours when the darkness and light create a purple haze over us. The fireflies were out. Daddy was working the night shift-- we loved when he did because it meant we were free-- no worries, no yelling, no early bedtime.

Mommy cooked dinner early. We went outside to play. During the summer months, we became experts at catching fireflies with empty coke bottles, cups, jars, our bare hands,  anything cuppy enough to catch them. We'd squeeze their bottoms, the crevice where the light came from. The smell of crushed flies lingered in our fingers, which we washed as soon as night fell and we were beckoned inside.

On this night, my mother called us in and we went, like good children. Inside, I turned on the television, navigated the old bunny ears to get okay reception. On the tube was  a purple shirted man with a guitar and a group of colored people singing by a piano. Na na na na na na naaa. At once, my mother-- yelling at me to turn the television off and to clean up my mess of barbie dolls scattered across the living room. The warm summer night breeze fell through the window screens. My eyes transfixed on the television, did not pay much attention.

Blmp.

She turned the television off, waving a hairbrush at me.
     "Clean up your mess!" She yelled, but it was no use. My fingers turned the television on and I watched them sing Hey Jude for me, for the first time in my history, and I wanted more.

***

This was the night I found the Beatles. My romantic account is fairly accurate in my memory. I have always felt it was meant to happen. ABC aired the Anthology that summer and I happened to stumble across it. The stars aligned at just the right moment for the air, the song, the girl at the foot of the television... My creative muse had been founded.

This weekend, we celebrate the Bealtes in their entirety-- watching the Anthology dvd's, the movies, reading the books... to celebrate their importance to us (Josh and I, as well as some friends) and how they've influenced our existence.

As I type this, the record of Sgt. Pepper plays in the background streaming sounds of sitars and organs into my ears. A Day in the Life is at the height of its climax and I see flashes of memories-- fireflies, my fathers hands, the summer grass, the purple shirt in my mind and it reminds me how resonant my childhood has been.

cheerio--
melissa