As I was scrolling down my Facebook page on a recent
evening, I stumbled across a post on late singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg’s
tribute page.
The post included an image of a letter a young girl
had written to Fogelberg, asking the meaning of a line in one of his songs.
What made the image all the more exciting, all the more powerful, was
Fogelberg’s handwritten reply in return.
He answered, that yes, though the words were
literal, the related metaphorical meaning was much as she had suspected.
The song in question was my favorite Fogelberg tune,
“Same Old Lang Syne.” It’s a song reportedly based on a real event in
Fogelberg’s life—a chance encounter with an old girlfriend in the grocery store
on Christmas Eve.
The tune captures all the surprise, awkwardness,
giddiness, memories, regret, warmth and more that such an encounter elicits. It
has an uncanny ability to draw its listener into the song, to invite her to
watch as a silent observer as the two experience more emotions than they must
have imagined possible in such a short time.
Perhaps the reasons it struck me so strongly, years
ago when I first heard it, and as I listened to it on tapes, CDs or car radios
through the decades, are twofold—I’ve seen the song from the outside looking in
and inside looking out.
I spent nearly 30 years of my life in a grocery
store, from the high school days when I met my first steady boyfriend in the
check-out lane until I was a middle-aged mother and grandmother, watching much
younger coworkers re-live those same excitement-filled moments.
Grocery store clerks see and hear a lot.
We witness those hugs and “Oh my gawds” when parted
lovers home for the holidays see each other—sometimes after months apart,
sometimes years. We watch warmly as widowers or divorcees bump into someone
from long ago, and we can see a spark, long smoldering, begin to re-ignite.
And, yes, we see those who have their regrets, bumping into old flames they let
slip away, those who have built a life with someones new.
And, too, because I lived in a rather small
community, it wasn’t unlikely for me to have my own “Same Old Lang Syne”
moments.
On more than one occasion, I’d look up and see,
across the counter, someone I’d met years earlier in the check-out lane, the
library, the old neighborhood, or in a small town nearby—and had dated a time
or two or a season.
As with Fogelberg and his “old lover in the grocery
store,” it was awkward at first, giddy at times, and sometimes warm—for the lives
that touch ours, no matter how fleeting, often do bring with them memories
worth remembering. It doesn’t take a six-pack from the liquor store or a
songwriter’s recollection to warm us with memories of days gone by, even when
we’re ever so thankful of the love we know today.
Though Peoria’s Dan Fogelberg, singer/storyteller to
the world, didn’t have his encounter in the frozen food aisle of the store
where I worked all those years, I saw scores of Dans and lovers meet again.
Through his words, from time to time, as the song
played in my mind, those others faded and Dan came into view. Tonight, writing
this, I see his face again and, as I do, the music plays anew.
© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013
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