When I was four years old, the song “These Dreams” by Heart scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t a cartoonish kind of fear, no witches or monsters. It was worse. It was this quiet, creeping sadness I didn’t have words for yet. The way the melody drifted like fog and Nancy Wilson’s voice cracked with sleep, it just got under my skin. I’d hear it from the backseat of my parents’ Buick station wagon, the one with the fake wood paneling that peeled off in the heat like sunburned skin. The cassette deck would cough it up without warning, and I’d sit there in the back, wide-eyed, fingers curled into the vinyl.
“These dreams go on when I close my eyes,” she sang, and something about that made me uneasy. As if dreams weren’t supposed to stay locked up in sleep. Like they were alive, wandering around on their own. My mom would hum along as she drove, not noticing I was quietly holding my breath.
It wasn’t just the car. That song stalked me. Grocery stores. Preschool. The radio in our pink-tiled kitchen where I’d sit cross-legged on the counter while my mom spread mayonnaise on Wonder Bread, packing a tuna sandwich for my dad’s lunch. The kitchen radio was always tuned to that soft rock station with the low-voiced DJ. “These Dreams” would come on, and suddenly I’d feel the floor drop out beneath me. My mom didn’t notice, I don’t think she ever did. She’d just say, “Get your legs off the counter, sweetheart,” and I’d pretend everything was fine.
I didn’t know what the lyrics meant back then, only that they felt heavy. Grown-up. Something I wasn’t supposed to touch. But I grew up anyway. And somewhere along the way, the fear faded. I stopped hearing the song in grocery stores, or maybe I just stopped noticing. I heard it again recently, playing low in the background at a bar, and it stopped me cold. That voice. That slow ache of melody. I didn’t feel scared this time. I felt home. Like a page I’d torn out as a kid had finally been taped back in.
Now, I play “These Dreams” on purpose. Windows down and volume up. I know every word. And I sing along.
haunting song
Maturity changes understanding, the song becomes a memory.