“Long Live” 8.3.2023: The “Best Day” with my “Fifteen” year-old and “Sweet Nothing”

The Eras Tour…from a mother’s perspective.

In truth, I have many best days with them…but I can still “see us lost in the memory” as “August slipped away into a moment in time” … because…well, Taylor was with us too that day!  Even those two new grey hairs that sprouted while trying to scramble for tickets on four different screens at my desk on November 15, 2022 are but a faded memory. 

Our family began our love affair with Taylor Swift after watching her discuss her lyrical genius process on 60 Minutes in 2011.  (Yes, odd, but 60 Minutes is also a family love affair.) 

Since then, the “Story of Us” and Taylor has been a “Love Story” to say the least.  We have devoured every era on Spotify, watched all her documentaries, obsessed over her Tiny Desk performance, watched uncountable YouTube performances and reels, sweated out to every Taylor Swift Peloton workout, and even before the Eras Tour we were lucky enough to be invited to the Reputation concert by our friends Joy and Attie Lin.  If you are still reading…well, you know how the Swiftie story goes from there.   

Many articles of today describe how Taylor “Speaks Now” to girlhood and the Swifties who grew up along-side her.  No doubt, she even speaks “back” to my girlhood (even though I have no desire to look back!) But I think so many of my Mama-Swiftie-Girlfriends would agree…that she speaks to motherhood as well. While her lyrics might be intended for young love, so much of the emotion she describes applies to motherhood too. Right mamas?

The days your children chose you as their mother were truly “Enchanted” and describe that first feeling of motherhood. And dancing in the living room with them from infancy to early childhood…priceless memories also encapsulated by her lyrics.

This night is sparkling, don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
That this night is flawless, don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
I was enchanted to meet you… 

Taylor attaches her spoken word to the early childhood years too in “Never Grow Up”:

Little hand wrapped around my finger, and it’s so quiet in the world tonight…

Don’t lose the way that you danced around in your PJs getting ready for school…

Oh, darling don’t you ever grow up, don’t you ever grow up, just stay this little…

Memorize what it sounded like when you dad gets home.

Remember the footsteps, remember the words said and all your little brother’s favorite songs…”

(honestly, this entire song…was the reason I wore waterproof mascara!)

With every day and every hour we reflect that: “They are the best thing, thats ever been mine….” And I know every mama friend of mine feels that “Afterglow” of “Daylight”…like something new happened inside of us after 20 or so years:

I don't wanna look at anything else now that I saw you
I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you
I've been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night
And now I see daylight, I only see daylight

In “Seven” she brings us all back to days at the park, tea parties, braids flowing and curls blowing, singing Sound of Music and Waldorfy folk songs in the park:

Picture me in the trees
I hit my peak at seven feet
In the swing
Over the creek
I was too scared to jump in
But I, I was high in the sky…

Are there still beautiful things?
Sweet tea in the summer
Cross your heart, won't tell no other
“I recall all your” face(s)
I “always” got love for you
Your braids “and curls” like a pattern
Love you “both” to the 🌙 moon and to 🪐 Saturn
Passed down like folk songs
The love lasts so long…

 And then the road trips in the later adolescence, getting “out of this town” with Annika on road trips up the coast:

Let's get out of this town
Drive out of the city, away from the crowds"
I thought Heaven can't help me now
Nothing lasts forever
But this is gonna take me down

I imagine with her pending driver’s license coming, there will be many more of these!

Xander our pastry chef and roti-maker has always been in the kitchen humming.  That alone is the “Sweet Nothing” that pulls me away from the media enhanced realities of “Industry disruptors and soul deconstructors.”

The experience of the concert has been well described and displayed by so many Swifties.  Like a trio of Masterminds, we planned our entire summer around August 3, 2023.  Quietly meditating over finding the letters to make Era bracelets with Long Ponds Studio Sessions and the Reputation movie streaming in the background was reminiscent of peacefully puzzling during the pandemic with the same soundtrack. Planning out the perfect outfits with the easter egg details, carefully applying waterproof mascara, finding “bejewled” ear protection, and packing up car meals with Taly and Alma for long after-concert parking lot jam “we remember all too well” after the Reputiation tour. It was so nice to spend over 3 hours in a stadium filled kind strangers who became friends: bright-eyed, patiently excited girls, boys, moms and dads … and of course “glitter” all over the floor.

For me, I was certainly there to watch Taylor, but also to watch my kids watch Taylor. They were both such uniquely different observers.  Annika was all in! This was her second rodeo. She recalled every detail of Reputation and wanted to soak it in like a true teenager this time.  She took off her pink sparkly ear protection because she wanted to hear the crowd, the screams, the cheer (and didn’t want to hear herself singing)!  Xander kept his ear protection in, watched with doe-eyes in amazement at the synchrony of lights, the mesmerizing stage, the lights, and Taylor as she walked closer to our viewpoint.  I could see him very quietly mouthing every lyric. He asked me after… “I felt the way the other fans felt, but I don’t even know how to scream those feelings!”  Me?…I wanted to sing along with Annika and scream, but I was so afraid I would suffer from “Eras-Amnesia” that I focused on making sure I could watch Taylor, the staging, the closeups on the screen, and the kids reactions to it all that immediately after the show, I felt I needed to go again! Watching all our videos for the next few days helped ease some of that desire but the announcement of the movie helped the most!

We are now ready for more “games to begin” with the movie. We plan to go multiple times with a variety of Swifties we wish we could have sat next to at the concert, with comfort and ease. And this time, I plan to unabashedly sing with Annika the entire way through.  We “Lovers” will never forget “Midnights” like this one! But so glad we get to relive it with Jay, relatives, and friends soon! Who else is coming with us?