Been to Canaan

Visit Mylestones for more Flashback Friday posts featuring Musical Memories.

When I saw this week's theme for Flashback Friday

a million songs ran through my head.

I love that a song can take you to a place in time so that no matter how many

years go by, whenever that song is played you are there.

As you know, because I talk about it ad nauseum, we moved back to

the states this past summer after six years in England.

We were actually under the impression we would be moving

back after five years but the date was continually pushed back.

We loved our life there so we weren't unhappy about staying,

just about the uncertainty of when and where we would be going next.

One afternoon, about a year before we moved, hubs and I were out driving in

the little MG...it's red and very cute and we had the top down and were blasting

our music because that's what we like to do.

Just ask our kids.

We listen to all kinds of music in our house but we

especially listen to a lot of 70's music.

Because it's the best.

Just sayin'.

It was one of those picture perfect, crystal clear, blue sky days.

They don't happen all that often in the UK but when

they do everyone does the happy dance.

My hubs worked in Oxford and we loved driving out that way on weekends too.

The drive from our house to Oxford?

It was spectacular.

You knew that word would reappear once I started

talking about England didn't you?

It is possibly my favorite drive anywhere in the world.

The wide open spaces, the green hills, the adorable little lambs,

mile after mile of bright yellow rapeseed in the spring...

and the sky...the sky is just so great big huge there.

Have you ever had a day where you feel like everything

is just right with the world? Where you are almost bursting

from an emotion that you cannot name?

Where contentment washes over you and makes

you feel like the luckiest person in the world?

This was such a day.

We came to our favorite part of the road...the place where you

come over a hill and are face to face with fields of green.

A song began playing.

My husband and I looked at each other and in that instant we knew.

We knew that no matter where in the world we found ourselves,

from that moment on we would

hear that song and think of the English countryside,

and the days and years we spent there,

and how in that place our children grew from child to adult,

and how memories were made every. single. day.

The song 'Been to Canaan' by Carole King

came out in 1972 but its a classic and is still played on the radio

from time to time. We have it in our ipod mix so it

pops up when we're not expecting it.

And when it does we look at each other and smile.

For a moment we're back on that country road

in a place far away,

not only in miles but in days and weeks and soon in years.

When that song plays

we are in the little MG with the top down

and the sun on our faces

and England at our feet.

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