My daughter is leaving for college in less than two months, and all I seem able to do is make her a playlist.
Not one she’ll throw on for a workout or a road trip. This one is already more than 68 hours long, and I’m nowhere near finished. It wanders from classic rock to jazz, new wave, punk, grunge, hip hop, soul, folk, and yes, even a little pop. Oddly enough, for someone who has lived in Italy for nearly three decades, not a single Italian song has made the cut.
I’ve been wondering why. Like every parent sending a child out into the world, I’ve had those moments of asking myself whether I’ve taught her everything she needs to know. Of course I haven’t. No parent ever does.
But maybe that’s not what this playlist is about.
It’s something of a memoir, I suppose. Every song opens a different door. One leads to high school in New York in the 1980s. Another to college in Pennsylvania, where lifelong friendships were forged. Others take me to graduate school in Rhode Island, to road trips, heartbreaks, first apartments, impossible summers, family gatherings, and versions of myself that only seem to exist once the opening chords begin.
Some songs helped mend a broken heart. Others are ones that her dad loved and that remind me of him and our courtship. Many instantly transport me to my best friends from college. And then some songs belong to our shared history. Whenever I hear Rihanna’s Umbrella, I’m back in that impossibly hot July of 2007, enormously pregnant, waiting for the little girl who would soon change everything.
The funny thing is, she already knows more of this music than I realized.
She loves the Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys. She has a soft spot for The Cure. There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a generous amount of David Bowie and Stevie Wonder. She’s grown up with the Smashing Pumpkins in the background, and I catch myself smiling when one of “my” songs comes on, and she knows every word.
Maybe that’s been the lesson all along. This playlist isn’t really about teaching her anything new. It’s about leaving her clues about who I am.
It’s my way of saying, “Before I was your mother, I was a daughter, a teenager, a college student, a friend, a woman who fell in and out of love, got her heart broken, picked herself back up, and somehow became the person lucky enough to raise you.”
Maybe, if I’m honest, the playlist is a selfish act. Not because I expect her to listen to all 68-plus hours of it—though I secretly hope she will—but because it’s a way of introducing her to versions of me she never had the chance to know.
And I’m not done yet.
So here’s my invitation: send me your suggestions. What songs changed your life? Which ones instantly transport you to another time, another place, another version of yourself? I’m always looking for the next track, and this playlist, much like motherhood itself, is still a work in progress.