Blasts from the Past.

Sometimes a scent or a song, or even a colour will suddenly send me right back to a former life, with a former me, feeling just as I did way back then.

One such song, is Boys of Summer, sung by Don Henley.

I was a shop owner back in that life. I could please myself what I served and how. I had a menu of 'healthy' foods, most of which I prepared myself, fresh, each day in my shop.

I had a Silver Torana car, which I loved driving, & I would have the radio playing loudly on my way to & from work.
One of the hits of that time was Don Henley's Boys of Summer. So every time I hear that song, I am instantly transported back to the freedom of my own car, my own shop, my own hours of trading.

Occasionally Gom would come to help me in the shop. Sometimes our Daughter came & helped me. I had one assistant, a girl, who worked part time, & she & I got along very well. We both loved the same music and both had the similar senses of humour.

She was married to a lean, mild looking man, who periodically turned into some type of Swamp Monster, for want of a better term. He did not drink, but he would turn suddenly into a fiend from Hell, and beat his wife. She would run to her Mother in Law's house, with her two children. Her MIL would slap, & hit, her son, when he came rampaging after his wife.

It seemed incredible. I would never have believed him capable of such lunacy, if I had not witnessed the broken teeth, the black eyes, the bite marks on her body. The scratches.

Her tales of splintered wardrobes, shattered mirrors, sounded farfetched.
His rage seemed to somehow, completely transform him, and give him incredible strength. As I said he was a smallish built man, who seemed so couth, so sane.

Everyone advised her to leave him. Each attack seemed to escalate. She finally did leave him, before he killed her. They remained 'friends', unbelieable as that sounds. I don't think even he knew what demons drove him.

She came to visit me, when I was another person, living another life entirely. I was so happy to see her, and see how well she looked.

The life and times of the Boys of Summer had passed by then.
Boys of Summer had meant a new house.
A son staying before he left for his Overseas Experience.
Another son, gaining an apprenticeship he really wanted.
That same son meeting the girl, who was to be the one of his dreams, for the next seventeen years. We loved her too.
Our Daughter, leaving a huge hole in my life, as she went back to live in New Zealand.

As in Fairytales, the world turned, our lives dramatically changed.
I sold my shop.
I found another life as an office worker. I became another me, happy enough.
Then our lives changed again.
I became another me, entirely different to any other, previous 'me'.

The Boys of Summer, didn't sing in this new life.
I no longer had my lovely house.
I no longer had my beloved Silver Torana.
On Saturday nights, nerve shattering music invaded my life, shattering more than my nerves.
I broke.

From the ashes came a new me.
I can listen to Boys of Summer now, and recapture the wonderful feeling of driving in my car, the happiness of that era.
I can see past the sadness, the sounds of other music, and still feel the joy of that music .

Don Henley, Boys of Summer