Sometimes among all of the rubble that is social media, a vein of pure gold emerges. That is what happened when I saw a video made by a 24-year-old young lady named Lannie Gardner from North Carolina. There was nothing unusual about what she did. She simply sat in front of a microphone and sang a cover to a familiar song, “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. But the artistry she showed has made people all over the world stop and take notice. I know that the YouTube video has been around for a while, but it seems to be popping up all of the time. Comments on her original video often claim that she not only matches Stevie Nix’s version of the song, but she actually improves it. I can’t argue with that assessment. You can find the video at the link: https:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V1LhC1zGouc One of the best things about music is that a song can take you back to an important place in your past. Since this week is spring break, when I hear the song Dreams by Fleetwood Mac it takes me back to Spring Break 46 years ago. In the previous year and a half, I had fallen in love with a beautiful California Girl at Abilene Christian College. We had countless dates at movies, mostly on campus, and spent countless hours together. I had even taken her home to meet my parents. But Spring Break of 1977, it was time to go home with my smart beautiful girl Lori Scott, to her home outside San Diego, California. I remember reaching El Paso and leaving Texas without my parents for the first time, traveling through New Mexico and Arizona and crossing into the California Desert at Yuma on Interstate 8. As we approached El Centro, California, I saw the Laguna Mountains in the distance for the first time. Before we got to them, we passed through miles of massive sand dunes before we started the climb into the mountains.
The Lagunas eventually gave way to the Cuyamaca Mountains and, as we passed Julian and Alpine, California, we started the descent into San Diego. The moment seemed to be frozen in time as a new song came on the radio. It was Dreams by Fleetwood Mac that I heard as I saw the iconic giant eucalyptus trees that dominate the landscape of lush greenery and orchards. A couple of weeks ago when I heard Lannie Gardner’s cover of the song Dreams, I closed my eyes and it was like seeing Lori’s home for the first time all over again and remembering how much I loved Lori then and still love her now. It is an irony that, when you think about it, Dreams is really a breakup song. The chorus repeats the lyric: “But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness. Like a heartbeat, drives you mad. In the stillness of remembering what you had, And what you lost, And what you had, And what you lost.” It isn’t the lyric that brings precious memories flooding back to me; it is the feeling I experienced driving out of the mountains into San Diego to the childhood home of the love of my life. It is such a fond memory, but the ones we have made in 44 years of marriage are even better. Just thinking about her still gives me butterflies in my stomach, but it is nice to remember how I felt about her then.
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