The Beatles, Michael, and Me

The boy looked at his mother waiting for her answer. She nodded in the affirmative. Yes, he again had permission to play a record on his mom's mid-century portable record player.

The boy gently lifted the phonograph's lid and turned the switch to the 'on' position. As the turntable spun in lazy circles, he ever so carefully slid the vinyl record from its album cover, holding it between his palms so as not to leave fingerprints.

He held the record up to his face as if it were a sacred offering. The boy then blew softly on the disk's surface.

He did this to ensure his breath would sweep away any particles of dust that might have mysteriously found their way onto the record. He knew any particles would drift away to find a sunbeam on which to float.

He had seen his mom do this trick. It was magical.

His chubby hands - with dimples that would eventually become knuckles - gently placed the record on the turntable, slowly spinning at thirty-three-and-a-third rotations a minute.

With equal gentility he lifted the phonograph arm and gingerly placed the needle on the record. Barely two and a half years old, the boy already had a favorite album. He called it the apple record; it was his mother's favorite as well.

The boy and his mother were sitting together cross-legged on the floor surrounded by record albums. Each one featured pictures of its artists, artists like Bob Dylan,The Highwaymen, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Mamas and the Papas; Peter, Paul and Mary.

There were no one-hit-wonders in this group of vinyl. Rather, the albums were a testament to the artistry of an evolving era whose music bore the spirit of youth awakened. As the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan noted, "the times they were a changing."

The boy once asked his mother, referring to Dylan, why the man thought he could be a singer. "He doesn't have good singing," the boy pronounced. The mom laughingly replied the artist was really a writer and a poet.

"He just likes to sing his own poems and sometimes the poems of others," Michael's mother explained. It would be decades later that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel prize for literature, proving once again that mothers, indeed, are usually right.

While Michael treasured and loved to listen to most of the albums that inspired his own mother during her college years, he always preferred her apple records: The Beatles albums.

He, like his mom, was swept up by the magic of music ... especially music by The Beatles, as was I, Michael's mom.

As the years sprinted forward, the dimples on Michael's hands became real knuckles. His piano teacher, a former Ukrainian concert pianist was the only piano teacher willing to take a four-year-old student.

When he was ten, this same teacher remarked that Michael had 'perfect pitch.' Hah! So, he was right about Bob Dylan after all I silently mused.

Through the years, while I continued listening to The Beatles, he did so as well.

While Michael mastered the classical piano, he also took up other instruments, played in garage bands, his high school concert band, and marching band, went to college, grew his hair beyond his shoulders, pierced his ears, appeared to be a throwback to the year he was born - 1968 - and graduated college with honors.

Following his dreams, he became successfully immersed in the music profession, winning awards for sound design as an audio engineer, traveling 'Here, There and Everywhere.'

Me? I mastered flipping from one radio station to another while driving, trying to avoid incessant commercials, and hoping to find a station airing a song by my beloved Beatles.

We both still revere The Beatles, especially the group's iconic White Album, released the year Mike was born; the first year we started listening to music together.

Today the boy - now a man - prefers to be referred to as Mike, much to my chagrin. And he now calls me Mom, although I would prefer to still be called Mommy.