The Twenty-Five-Year-Old iPod

Before this last trip to Norway, I spent a solid three minutes or so digging through my desk drawer, looking for who-knows-what.   Not my passport, that is constantly on my radar; maybe an empty journal to use as a travel diary?  Maybe a clean handkerchief?

What I found (much to my surprise), buried toward the back, was my old iPod.  The black, battered, bruised, battle-worn iPod that I sort of… errr... stole from my ex (so I guess 'my' old iPod is a relative term, hey?).  I brought it out of the drawer, handling it like a museum object.  I probably should have been wearing gloves.  And then I took a chance and plugged it into a charger.

Low and behold, it worked.

What I found was the rabbit hole and down it I got a peek at the Ghost of Kate Past: the ghost in the machine of a 25-year-old.

My playlists were perfect for me, then: I scroll through and I remember the one I listened to while lying in the sun, on the beach behind the Ranger house in Manteo, North Carolina.  I remember thinking how very hip it was of me to have Rihanna's Umbrella back to back with Death Cab For Cutie's Transatlanticism.   I remember the playlist that motivated my runs, legs pumping and feet pounding.  It is called 'Root Down, Bitches.'

I remember how much I loved, and still love, Florence + The Machine's first album, Lungs.  I listen to the opening notes of Dog Days are Over and I am back in Chengdu, China, lacing my running shoes and walking out the door.  How brave I thought I was, the too-tall foreigner running through the smog-fog-funk stained city.  I hear this song and remember how when I was much younger, and a different person than I am today, I wanted to dance to it at a wedding- in fact I wanted to dance to it at my own wedding (if it would ever happen [insert snorting laughter]).

I turn the iPod over in my hands and look at the quaint 30GB etched into the back.  That's cute, really.  89GB of music in my iTunes later and it just seems funny to think that the Yule Goose (I really don't remember where that name came from, the one I have now is called Chooks.  So is my computer) was ever up to the challenge of handling it.  

I remember every time I dropped it, and how each time it fell another black line etched itself across it's face- like wrinkles… not from Father Time but from Clumsy Kate.  And how after a while of dropping it, something started rattling, and then that something started rattling a little more and then it stopped holding a charge very well at all.

But it still holds enough of a charge to play these five years later, after having been forgotten in the dark, abysmal back of a writing desk.  It holds enough charge to have accompanied me to Norway on another adventure of (re)discovery.  And to now come with me on walks with Henry.  And to maybe go back to Norway for another round.

Here is this tiny little machine and it's like a time capsule in my hands and my ears: that was me, then.  That was the Kate that happened before the rest of it happened and turned that Kate into this one.  Here is this piece of metal and it holds this part of me, just like I hold it.  I remember her, me.  We were sillier then, and maybe a little more naive.  But then again, maybe we are still that silly and that naive, because we still like those playlists.

And I still really love dancing in the streets when I should be running- regardless of where I am and who is watching.

And until next time…

Gonna kick it Root Down, my Darlings.