Moments to Remember

I know something now about Rush (the rock band, not the talk show host) that I did not know before. I know the date when I received that first Rush album on Moon records, the one my friend Bob Roper (then a record promoter at A&M of Canada) kindly sent me:  it was May 24, 1974, a Friday.  I marked it up with a star next to the track I thought would be the most important for the deejays to play (as you may have guessed, it was "Working Man"), and having first given it to Denny Sanders (he was on the air at the time) to see if there would be an audience reaction (there was), a couple of days later, a copy was in the bin for all of the WMMS-FM announcers to use.  And they did.

The reason I did not recall the exact date is simple:  I had no idea at the time that championing an unknown band from Canada was about to change my life. (In fact, as I noted on the album in my Music Director's comments, they were probably going to be confused with another Canadian band of that time, Mahogany Rush.)   I had no idea the band-members and I would become friends, and I had no idea that Bob Roper and I would still be in touch four decades later.  So, while I figured out that I got the album in the late Spring of 1974, the day and date never stayed with me... until someone provided me with the information, 42 years later.

As many of you know, I turned 70 on Valentine's Day, and as I get older (even though I still think of myself as young and cute), I sometimes think back on certain times and events in my past; sometimes it's to wonder if I could have done something differently, and at other times, it's to marvel at how many years later, the results of an event are still part of my life... I mean, knowing the members of Rush for nearly 43 years is pretty amazing.  But of course, at the time, I had no way of knowing how that event would turn out, or even that it would be important in the future.  I was a radio music director.  I listened to lots of albums.  It was my job.  It was fun to discover a new band, but I never expected to become friendly with the members or keep in touch for years.  It all proves you just can't predict what will happen.  

The same is true about my personal life:  for example, if you had asked me at the time, I couldn't tell you the exact day and date when I met my husband-- we just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, but again, while I know where we met, I never expected we'd still be together years later, so it didn't occur to me to mark in my memory exactly when I first saw him.  Unlike movies, where meeting "the one" is accompanied by special background music, my life never did come with an orchestra, nor even a lone guitarist, to warn me that a big event was about to occur.  As my then-boyfriend and I continued to date, I was able to retroactively mark the day we first met (March 18, 1984), but again, at the time, it didn't seem like it was going to be anything unique.  When you are dating, you meet lots of folks, and it's hard to know which one will be the one you marry.  In this case, despite a few breakups and near-breakups, we ultimately did get married, and I feel blessed that we are still together.

My point is that many of life's biggest events only became noteworthy long after they have taken place.  Sometimes, it may not seem that anything important is happening, but life has a way of taking some unexpected twists and turns.  May 24, 1974 was one of those days for me, and March 18, 1984 was another.  Neither seemed unusual or noteworthy at the time, yet both have had a lasting effect on who I am and how I've lived.  And if there's a message in any of this, it's just to say don't assume you know what's going to happen.  Sometimes, a life-changing event has just taken place, but you won't know its full impact until sometime in the future.