Traveling Solo with My Husband's Playlist

Last week I made an importune trip to Door County, Wisconsin to do research for the next book in my Leigh Girard mystery series. It’s a 4-½ hour drive one way to the Door County Peninsula, which if you haven’t been there is often described as the “Cape Cod of the Midwest.” I took the quicker route on the way up, but on the way back I decided to take the scenic route, 42, which meanders through a series of harbor towns that hug Lake Michigan.

Since radio stations flickered into static as I drove, I plugged in Jerry’s IPod and began listening to his playlist. Jerry and I have been married for over forty-two years. We met at a John Carroll sock hop when he was a freshman and I was a senior in high school. I’m mentioning this because with so much history between us I thought I really knew him. But as I listened to his music, I realized that I did and didn’t know him, and that after so many years this guy can still surprise me.

His predominate group was the Rolling Stones—no surprise there. We’d both been Stones fans from the start of our relationship. We’d even attended a concert in Cleveland when the Stones were first starting out, sitting close enough to see them sweat. Very cool. And there were the expected tunes of our turbulent generation, Neil Young’s “Ohio,” Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate One,” some Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles, the Beatles.

So as I drove through Algoma, Kewanee, and toward Two Rivers past the nuclear power plant that still had the large boulders out front to deter terrorists, hauled there right after 9/11, my mind journeyed through our lives together, moments we shared because a certain song was playing and we were together.

Then suddenly Willie Nelson started singing “You Were Always on my Mind.” Great song, but I’d never put it on my playlist. But it meant something to Jerry. Was I seeing a different, more sentimental side of my husband? Or did he just like Willie Nelson? Maybe I shouldn’t read too much into one song. A few more songs played, I kept driving, my eyes drawn to Lake Michigan as it curled light toward the shore ceaselessly.

As I neared Two Rivers, a song I’d never heard before started playing. The song had such poignancy and spoke about an enduring love that it took my breath away. “Hold me till I die, / Meet you on the other side.” A few more songs played; I stopped for lunch in Two Rivers, home of the first ice cream sundae, the song still with me.

After lunch I could have turned on the radio, but I didn’t. Instead I kept listening to Jerry’s playlist, cycling through a second time waiting for that song. This time listening more closely to the words, trying to decipher why my husband had put it on his list, a man who kept his emotions in check. The song said everything I felt about our years together. “Stay with Me/You’re all I see.” Maybe we do find each other in song, I thought, as I hurled past farms and rolling fields, the music another journey, another destination.

When I hit Milwaukee the traffic picked up and Bob Seeger started singing “Roll Me Away”--the best traveling song ever, all about freedom of the road, freedom of the self, America’s restless spirit of individualism. I hit the repeat button and let him take me with careless abandon through the snarl of city traffic. “I could go east, I could west; it was all up to me to decide,” I sang along. I didn’t see a young hawk flying but like the girl in the song I headed home.

When I got home, I asked Jerry about the mysterious song. He grinned and said, “Yeah. It’s ‘Just Breathe’ by Eddie Vetter of Pearl Jam.

“Why’d you put it on your IPod,” I asked.

“I like it.”

“Me too,” I said, “me too.”