Free Fallin'

A story about Tom Petty, time travel, and the songs that take you home

I will never change the station when a Tom Petty song comes on.

On my daily commute, I’m a constant station-flipper, hitting the buttons again and again before I finally settle on the best option. It’s usually country… but sometimes it’s Tom Petty.

Tom Petty was before my time, but he’s my mother’s favorite, and because of that, a frequent flyer in the soundtrack to my youth — right alongside Journey, Boston, and John Denver (more Dad’s favorite than Mom’s). I was a child singing along to American Girl and Free Fallin,’ a rock baby before I ever knew what any of the words meant.

Today in the car, Free Fallin’ came on (as it often does), and as always, I turned it up and started belting it out. But today’s listen felt different. It caught me off guard. It made me strangely emotional, out of the blue. I heard Tom Petty, and he brought me back home again.

It made me think about childhood, about the simplicity of life back then. It made me think about my mom, my first and forever best friend, and how I am so much older now than when I first sang those words… and that she is too. My parents aren’t “old,” but they’re older, and that’s scary in its own quiet way. In your mind, your parents stay frozen in time — the thirty-something parents of your childhood — until one day your dad’s hair is grayer, your mom is more tired, and you realize you’re the thirty-something parent now. They’re the grandparents.

Mom and Dad

Sometimes I wish I could climb into a time machine and go back to the safe bubble of my parents’ house — maybe just for an hour. Just long enough to sing Free Fallin’ in the kitchen again, to be a kid at their house on Christmas Eve, to sleep on their bedroom floor under the quilt my grandma made. And don’t you ever get a lump in your throat when you think about the way things used to be, and how they will never be that way again? Because I do.

I am not free fallin’ anymore, not with the freedom of childhood when you were safe and tucked up under your parent’s arms. These days, I’m a mom with a career, deadlines, and more stress than I can handle on some days. And all I really want sometimes is to go back in time and sing those songs with my parents again, to not have so many cares in the world. Now I carry the weight — the same weight they must have felt when they were the thirty-something parents I remember. But they didn’t show it. They let me be a kid. They gave me the kind of memories that are amazing enough to ache for now.

I’d go back to the Christmas Eve parties when our whole family crowded into the house. Back to when my cousins were my best friends instead of strangers I lost over a stupid fight. Back to when I wasn’t angry at my grandfather because I was too young to see who he really was. Back to when our family was still whole because my Papa was still alive. Back to when we believed in Santa and went to bed in new pajamas after eating ourselves into a happy, tired haze. Before the family splintered, before the silence replaced the laughs — silence that somehow feels louder than words ever did. I think about those Christmas Eve nights often, because those are some of the memories that loom the largest from my childhood. And while I will tell you again and again that I am an introvert and a homebody, somehow those nights full of family and chaos and noise (all the things that overwhelm me now), were some of the best of my life.

I know this might sound melancholy, but I promise I’m fine. Life is still great and I’m thankful for what I have. But sometimes a song isn’t just a song. Sometimes it hits you at exactly the right moment and you just have to follow it — wherever it may lead. And sometimes, it leads you straight back to 1995 in your mom’s kitchen, a place that will always be home, even long after you’ve left.

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