If You Love Something, Set It Free…

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things about Christmas was listening to the music on our record player. Yes, Christmas music on vinyl. As many of you know, I’m a collector of vinyl and have been working on my Christmas music collection for several months now. My goal is to own all the albums I had as a kid since many aren’t available in any form. Today I decided to take the “cover art only” albums and change out all my frames for the holiday season. I had several copies of some of my favorites so I’d have a good LP to play and a bad one for framing purposes. It was when I was framing the back room albums that things got freaky. There, in the top left-hand corner of the back of the album, was my mom’s writing and the word “taped.” I remember, sometime in the early 80s, when we got a new-fangled cassette player and mom converted all the albums to tape. Being her usual organized (and slightly anal-rententive) self, she’d written on the back that the LP had been taped. I immediately called her and we had an “I can’t believe it” moment over the phone. Of course I then called Steve and my sister to tell them the same thing. Turns out my beloved album had come home. Later this afternoon I started going through all my other albums and gathering all the Christmas selections to place next to the turntable. I uncovered another stash of LPs like the ones we’d had growing up. I turned them over and, in the top left-hand corner, mom had written “taped” on these as well. Now I had four wonderful pieces of my childhood back in my life. What a warm feeling it is to know I have these even if they are in terrible shape for playing. I guess it’s true that if you love something and set it free (or have a garage sale and sell it) that it will someday return to you!