Green Rocky Road (1966) - Karen Dalton

I was with my parents. I had moved to Massachusetts a few months earlier. Little Man's health was starting to go downhill. My anxiety was a mess. I was shell-shocked from so much disconnecting. My parents' visit was the first taste of home I’d had.

It rained the whole time they were here. It was early fall, before the leaves turned. A wet fall. I didn’t know where to take them. I didn’t know where anything was. From a list assembled of old reddit posts, I chose the Bridge of Flowers. It sounded like the kind of thing moms like.

It was really nice. We visited just a few weeks before it closed for some pretty major repairs, and I’m glad we got to see it. I like knowing it’s there. This was where I think we all felt the best with one another that week.  None of us knew how this kind of thing was really supposed to go down. We’d never needed to do it before. We took pictures together there. I liked it, and they liked it. Even though the weather wasn’t great, everyone was comfortable. The little town, the waterfall, the incredible contrast of water, rock, and green.

"Tell me who you love? Tell me who you love? Who do you love?"

I think it’s raining in the song too.

We ate sandwiches at a café. Coke, Diet Coke, ginger tea.

Green Rocky Road played on the way out there. It came on shuffle. I had it in my head the whole time we were walking around. Singing the chorus, I watched my parents get acquainted with this very new and very other place. I think they started to imagine themselves living here. That it could be a good life. Not the life they have, or the one they imagined for me. A life made of different pieces but put together in familiar shapes.

“Promenade in green

Tell me who you love?”

It felt like a small, inertial acceptance. Like I could see the new life I was beginning clearly for the first time in the reflection of their recognition of its possibility. I played the song again on the way back. I was singing quietly, watching the forests and the trees and the rock. My dad was driving. The wipers were calm and purposeful. He asked me “What kind of music is this?”

This song feels upstream of me—like everything I get came through it.

This is a playlist I’ll be adding to over time. Each song comes with a journal entry of some kind—what that looks like might shift and morph as I go. I’m going to have fun with these. It’s a celebration of songs that make me feel all kinds of ways.