New Year's Countdown

When I was a little girl, I would tape (yes, tape) the top 50 song countdown each year…and, then like many young girls, would dance around the house to my favorites, daydream about what my young brain thought were the meanings behind the love songs and dream about who my prince would be. Fast forward a few (no counting!!) decades and my love of countdowns is still the same…but this time I DVR the CMT top 50 video countdown and sit with a glass of wine to enjoy them. The dancing around the house still happens sometimes (a little less this year as I really don’t want “my guts to fall out”) but, unfortunately, the wondering about the lyrics has been replaced by an understanding of why people write about heartache and sorrow, and, as we all know, I’ve realized there are a few more frogs than princes in the world.


But, last night a song actually struck me as one I need to listen to and pay attention to more often. Of course, it is a country song so I would be more drawn to it than I would be a Nine Inch Nails or Death Cab Cutie song (hey, pretty impressed I even have heard of those bands, aren’t you?!) but it spoke to me, really. I’m not always a huge Reba fan…which is pretty sacrilegious for a country music fun but this one is my new favorite. It was called “Somebody’s Chelsea” and it was about a woman sitting next to an older man on a plane ride who told her about the wife he’d recently lost who he’d loved for 60 years. A woman who really was his world…and how it felt to be the woman sitting next to him on the plane who’d settled more than once but wasn’t going to settle again. She was eventually going to be “Somebody’s Chelsea”. We know that I can’t be someone’s everything (that would give me waaaay too much control) but this song was the musical analogy of someone who’d cover me with a blanket if I fell asleep on the couch. I want, no deserve, to be why someone can’t wait to get home at night, to be who he thinks of periodically during the day and who he talks about when he is on a plane to wherever. And, I really do believe that person is out there…somewhere.

New Year’s Eve can be looked at two ways (and, as it is coming up soon, I’m thinking about this). You can either look at it and reflect on the things that didn’t happen in the past year or look at it as the door to a new tomorrow. I, personally, am going to be excited about the adventures that await me…and maybe this will be the year I do meet that prince charming from dreams long ago…but only if I will be “His Chelsea”.