I spotted the post above this week when browsing through my Facebook newsfeed. It immediately made me smile, breathe a huge sigh of relief and think of Barry Manilow’s 1977 hit song, “Looks like we made it.”
I was 11 years old when this song was on the charts, and I loved Barry’s whole album. At some point, loving Barry Manilow was a dorky thing. It wasn’t so much dorky, but my taste in music changed as I discovered new music on my own and not only the stuff I heard from the backseat of my parent’s smoke-filled car.
I jumped in and started liking all kinds of music my parents called awful; it was like when people shook their fingers cursing Elvis and the Beetles during their era. Unlike our parents. Marty and I keep up with the newest hard rock, metal, pop, Latino, hip-hop, and dance club music.
We are both musical people since we were young. We appreciate old, new, cultural, light, or hardcore music. We listen to music for hours, usually loudly, in our production kitchen, which is different every day. Lately, we’ve also been listening to music videos on the TV at work.
I remember when I was 11 years old, downstairs in our basement, pretending to be a nightclub singer. My parents had a bar in their basement; almost everyone I knew parent’s had one too.
There was a couch and two end tables, and armchairs. The furniture was that horrible wooden 70’s looking shit everyone had back in the day. I set up pretend cocktail tables from random shit I found on the “work” side of the basement.
I had an invisible microphone, which I remember always taking my hand and moving the invisible cord out of my way as I sashayed in between all the tables of people. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! I want to sing you one of my favorite songs to start off our night with.” Then I’d belt out, “Looks like we made it.” Always a crowd pleaser.
When I discovered my biological history on my father’s side, I wasn’t surprised to learn he was a nightclub singer, bartender, and performer in the Catskills and later moved to California. He took off on his family with three children when my youngest brother Dan was not even a year old.
He turned out to be a deadbeat dad, sadly enough. He only saw his children once while they were growing up, taking them out for the day and promising to see them again. He died in California on his 50th birthday when my youngest brother was 12.
Ugh, what a shame. I have his performing gene and love of cooking to thank, and most importantly, three awesome siblings. I share so many things in common with them that it’s always mind-blowing when we discover more things.🤗
Back to Barry. It wasn’t until my adult years while listening to “Looks like we made it” in the supermarket that I really understood the words I belted out as a kid. It was a sad song. It was about two people making it alone and not together anymore. I muttered, “What the fuck?”
I thought of that song when I saw that post because we made it out of the darkest part of the year. Marty and I both suffer from seasonal depression, which worsens as the years fly by. I’ll bet it affects almost everyone else too.
The song is fitting for today, waking up to -20 degrees which felt like -36 degrees this morning at 5:45 am, which was the coldest period of this artic weather we are experiencing.
Marty went to the farmer’s market alone today; I stayed home and held down the fort with Klaus, who hadn’t left my side on the couch. The weather is warming up today, and it will be a balmy 41 degrees tomorrow. Thank goodness!
The artic freeze didn’t affect me as much, knowing there was a light at the end of the tunnel. We haven’t had a bad winter this season and have been expecting Mother Nature to say, “Take this, suckers.”
While I love warm weather and look forward to summer, I realize daylight is what I love and need; even though we don’t get that much sunshine here in Vermont, we all need daylight.
I’ve felt like a tiny seed planted in the soil all week, and every day I am getting closer and closer to the warmth and light. Look’s like we made it!
***By the way, when we were in Vegas a year and a half ago, Marty asked me when we saw a billboard of Barry Manilow if I wanted to go see him. I giggled, said no, and thought I’d leave that memory alone and not ruin it.
LOL. Love the image detail of you moving the microphone cord out of your way. I was a big Barry fan too. But you’re right, as kids I think we liked that they were fun to sing, with their dramatic crescendos, but didn’t always realize the stories behind them. A favorite of mine was Weekend in New England, but instead of “When will this strong yearning end” I liked to sing “When will this strong urine end”. Like it was about a UTI.