Ever since the pandemic started, my friend Ingrid sends me an email every single morning. She feels that as single women living alone, we need to have regular contacts to make sure we’re okay. The emails are often about mundane stuff, like what we did the day before, or just wishing each other a good day.

A while ago, she started to get creative with the subject lines, tying them to appropriate songs. “Monday, Monday”, or “Tuesday afternoon”, or “It’s a Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody.” We both like music a lot.

Now she’s upped her game and sends YouTube Links to go with the subject line. 

Today, the day after the Republican Convention started and Trump declared his VP running mate, her song was “For what it’s worth” and the YouTube video featuring Buffalo Springfield, who made the song famous in 1966. It was an anthem of the Vietnam antiwar movement then (“There something happening here, what is I’m not exactly clear, there’s man with a gun over there … “). It fits the current context as well, but for me, it brings up painful personal memories. 

In the spring of 1970, I was in a miserable marriage with a physically abusive husband who was absent 18 hours a day and only came home to sleep. I was stuck out in the country in po-dunk Texas, in a roach-infested house with no air condition. It was so sweltering hot that my nine-month-old toddler broke out in heat rashes and I had to keep him covered in calamine lotion to soothe the itch. At night, cock roaches the size of hamsters would speed across the formica counter tops when I turned on the light. I didn’t have any money, or a car, or friends, and I barely spoke enough English to get by shopping for necessities at a puny supermarket down the street, laboriously pushing a stroller over the gravel road. That was my only human contact and escape during the day, except for my toddler. And then I heard that song. 

It’s haunting guitar riffs struck a chord in me. I didn’t have a stereo, not even a radio, just a small portable TV with aluminum-foil enhanced rabbit ears, and every night right before the 11 o’clock news, there was a commercial that played that song. My song. The song that stirred me, made me feel something, filled me with anticipation. I looked forward to those 2 minutes and 51 seconds every night, to hear that song that soothed my pain and gave me hope.

I eventually made it out of that hell hole and saved myself and my son. Now, that song is my victory song. Every time I hear it I realize just how far I’ve come!