Why I love ABBA

As I was watching Mamma Mia! a few nights ago (and enjoying it immensely - much to my wife's dismay) I was struck again by the power of sound and smell to trigger our best - and sometimes our worst - memories. After the movie, I was left with a deep, satisfying sense of nostalgia that couldn't possibly have been because of Meryl Streep's dance moves. No, there had to be something else behind it. And that got me thinking...

Vacations are sacred, magical times when you are young. For me they came in two varieties. Summer vacations were comforting and consistent: two weeks in the same beach town, year after year, meant for sun, ocean, and the endless highs and lows that come with growing up in the carefree summer bubble of South African beaches (highest high: taking and surviving the most dangerous of waves; lowest low: well, failed romances, of course).

But winter vacations were something completely different. Where summer vacations were all about resting in the known with the same beach community year after year, winter vacations were about long road trips exploring the unknown, endless hours on the road, together as a family, no outsiders allowed. Where summer vacations were for being as useless as possible, winter vacations were for adventure and growing our increasingly inquisitive minds. And what I remember most about winter vacations is how they always got started: very very VERY early.

My Dad was all about hitting the road at 5am. Just on the first day of vacation, mind you - the rest of the time we didn't have quite such a strict schedule. He would say it's about being practical - getting out of the city before traffic picks up, or making sure we hit a certain town before sundown. But I think it was about more than that. I think he liked being on the open road with his family sleeping in the car, the excitement and endless possibility of driving in a new direction under the cover of darkness. Always an explorer at heart, it is one of the strongest senses I inherited from him, and a tie between us that remains unspoken but fully understood. I now think about the many times I had left home - not necessarily in physical darkness, but always with an uncertainty that felt pretty dark to me - and I know that as much as he would have wanted me to stay in town, he understood what I had to do. He understands.

So, at 5am we would all complain and pretend to be upset as we got up and had breakfast, we'd throw our things in my dad's ancient light-green Mercedes - more of a boat than a car, but an extremely comfortable boat to sleep in - and be on our way. Lying in the back seat of that old car in the pre-dawn hours, pretending to sleep but too excited to do so, is one of my fondest memories. I would imagine where we would be by the time the sun came up. Of course I'd studied the map extensively in the weeks before we left, so I knew exactly where we were going. But what would it look like? Where would we sleep tonight? It might be those moments that transformed me into a serial traveler, always looking for the next place to explore. And the image I have of those times is still as fresh as if it happened yesterday: the roof of the Mercedes was lined with a synthetic that had tiny holes in them, very close together, and if you stared at it just right, it would turn into a 3D image that seemed to come out of the roof, close enough to touch, like tiny stars. The road and the car were quiet. But my mind was racing. And as fast as my mind was going, I'm pretty sure my Dad was thinking only one thing behind the wheel: this is what I live for.

Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. My brother is 9 years older than I am, and if you spend that much time on the road, the fights are going to be plentiful and not so far between. I can't remember much about those fights, but I do remember what was usually the only thing that could break them up - music. But that wasn't easy either. Music is serious business in my family. And on long road trips, we broke into 2 clearly defined factions. My parents preferred talk radio or classical music. My brother and I preferred something a little more youthful (for the time): Neil Diamond, Chris de Burgh, Cat Stevens. Sometimes my parents won, and sometimes my brother and I won. But then there was the one band we could all agree to listen to. ABBA. Civilized enough to suit my parents, enough drums and fake electric guitar to suit my brother and I. Oh, ABBA. We would listen to those tapes until they were worn completely through. We would sing along and forget about all our disagreements - in fact, I would venture to say that ABBA became the defining music of our family vacations.

I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. Watching Mamma Mia! is not about the movie at all. It is about a childhood's worth of memories flooding over me all at once like water through a burst dam, and the emotion that comes with it. We all have these memories, and they're triggered by different things - the smell of freshly-cut grass, hearing a jingle from an old TV commercial, a song that played at your high school graduation. You know how it feels.

And it reminds me again of how closely connected we are through our memories, how that which is most personal is most universal, how our humanity and our joy is tied up in the way we were and how that shapes the way we are and can be. And since this is Christmas time and my family is an ocean away, it reminds me of bonds that cannot be broken, bonds strengthened by time together and not broken by time apart. Of traditions we pass on to the new families we create out of nothing, and the bonds that exist not just among us but also with generations past.

And most of all, it reminds me that life is good because of the people we love. So during this time of family and being together, give a little extra love, and maybe start a tradition. Because who knows, generations from now your great-grandson might hear an "old" song from 2008 and be struck silent by a flood of memory you helped create. And so we live on through the people we love.

Oh, and that's why I love ABBA.