http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDOL7iY8kfo

“When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land? I should have stayed on the farm, I should have listened to my old man…”

That’s the song for me, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. That song from the first note, every time I hear it, transports me to a time and a place that I was actually too young to remember. That song recalls one of my very first memories. I think we all have song that transports us to a time and a place, the melody eliciting a memory that has been burned into our existence. It could be that song that played during a first kiss, or ‘that’ time with your friends, it can be any number of these “remember whens?” These moments hurled into our consciousness every time we hear that particular song.

The moment for me was when I was three. I was in a small moving van with my older brother, JoJo, my younger sister, Renee, and my beautiful mother Cheryl. We where traveling north from Southern New England. My mother had packed her children into the rented vehicle and was going home.  Leaving her cheating husband, my father, behind. She was returning to her Mother Beatrice’s home on the Penobscot Indian Reservation.

This “Yellow Brick Road,” moment for me has many elements. When I hear the song a combination of audio, the song, and visuals are crystalized in my mind. What I figure is that the song came on the radio and my mother turned it up. When the song plays I can still see a visual of her singing along with the song, “you know you can’t hold me forever,” as a tear rolled down her cheek. Beyond her singing mouth a breath taking view of the nighttime skyline of Boston comes into focus. We were crossing Tobin Bridge heading North on Route 1 over looking the brightly light city of Boston.  The girders of the bridge giving the skyline an old time movie feel, slashing the view with alternative diagonal lines, flickering the scene.

The song is gift. It changed my life. I got the chance to grow-up with two strong Penobscot women; my Mom and Gram gave me the chance to grow in my culture. That song is anthem, it is the first time that I have ever gone HOME.  There is a bit of irony to this story of me returning home to the Indian Reservation, the moving van that took me there was a Mayflower moving van.