When my mom and I lived alone in our first apartment (post divorce), before she saved for a house and a stereo, she used to turn on the radio in the kitchen of our small apartment every morning and the station was always country music. I fell in love without being aware. I loved the storytelling. Sometimes the songs made me laugh, more often, they made me cry. They always made me feel.

Before that, the first non-Disney soundtrack that I listened to and cried over as I played it repeatedly on my Donald Duck record player was Ben by Michael Jackson. I was five and my parents had just divorced. I have a vivid memory of sitting on my aunt's big bed, alone, listening, singing and crying. Ben, the two of us need look no more/ We both found what we were looking for/ With a friend to call my own/ I'll never be alone /And you my friend will see/You've got a friend in me. (It was only years later that I discovered he was singing to a mouse.)

Ben (also a soundtrack, though not Disney) was the last album I owned until some years later when my mom's boyfriend bought me the soundtrack from Grease right after we saw the movie. The star of that movie was also the singer of the first country song I ever loved, Please Mister Please by Olivia Newton John. Please Mr. please, don't/ play B-17/It was our song, it was his song /but it's over/Please Mr. please/ if you know what I mean/I don't ever wanna hear that song again.

I'm sure it meant more to me when I was a teenager with personal exeprience than when it first made me cry. Even so, other people's heartache made/makes me cry as much as if not more than my own.

The next song I remember crying to every time I heard it on the radio was Spring by Tanya Tucker. The lines that always started the crying were: Momma don't go away/And leave me all alone/Momma said to the welfare lady/Find my child a good home. (There is a happy ending. Although Momma dies and Spring grows up in an orphanage, she finds love and gets married in the end. :-)

One song that made my mother laugh hysterically when she heard me sing it was Lucille by Kenny Rogers. The chorus is You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille/With four hungry children and a crop in the field/I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times/But this time your hurting won't heal/You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille." I, however, thought he was saying "400 children and a crop in the field." My mother cried she laughed so hard before saying, "400 children? I guess she did leave. I'm surprised she's not dead."

I could be heard singing other Rogers songs in the late 70s/early 80s, particularly: The Gambler, She Believes in Me, Through the Years, Lady, You Decorated My Life, and We've Got Tonight.

Once I reached high school I was falling in love with classical music, pop, soft rock, hard rock, heavy metal, R&B, musical theater and rap. In college I added jazz. I listened to some country in the 90s, but life was crazy as I married, lost my daddy, had a child, bought a house, a car and started my career in education. It wasn't until I was driving on 95 North heading home from a conference in DC that I found a country station for the first time in years. A new Alan Jackson song came on. I had to pull over because I couldn't see through my tears. It was 2001. The first lines were

Where were you when the world stopped turnin'

That September day?

Were you in the yard with your wife and children

Or workin' on some stage in L.A.?

Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke

Risin' against that blue sky?

Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor

Or did you just sit down and cry?

I was in a classroom, teaching.

After that day, I renewed my love of country. Until they took it off the air last fall, 94.7 NY country was my go to radio station. (Now, I'm all classical or "music from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s" when I have the radio on.)

Over the last two decades, I have amassed a treasure trove of country songs that have made me feel not only joy or sadness, but also, simply, connected. We, humanity, share a lot of the same basic life experiences - love; lust; longing; anger; sadness; loss; loneliness; betrayal; family - the good, the bad and the ugly; work woes; illness; death. Some of my favorites include: Let's Make Love by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw; Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying and Humble and Kind; Reba McIntyre's If you See Him, and every single song on her album What if it's You ; all the songs on Alan Jackson's album Drive; Luke Combs' One Number Away and Forever After All; Scotty McCreary's Five More Minutes; Blake Shelton's My Eyes and Austin; Ryan Hurd and Maren Morris' Chasing After You; Sam Hunt's Make You Miss Me, Take Your Time, Break Up in a Small Town and Nothing Lasts Forever; Lee Bryce's Boy; Jane Kramer,'s I Got the Boy, Brad Paisely and Carrie Underwood's Remind Me, Trace Adkins, You're Gonna Miss This; Luke Bryan's Play it Again; Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats and Drinking Alone; Little Big Town's When Someone Stops Loving You and Overdrinking; The Civil Wars Dance Me to the End of Love, Dust to Dust, Tip of My Tongue, Poison and Wine, and Forget Me Not; Lady Antebellum's Dancing Away with My Heart, What if I Never Get Over You, Bartender, Need You Now, If I knew Then, Wanted You More; Taylor Swift's Our Song, Teardrops on My Guitar, Fifteen (which came out when my son was fifteen - cue the tears), White Horse and Love Story; Miranda Lambet's The House that Built Me; and Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson's From Here to the Moon and Back (which I sang and recorded for my husband a decade ago and which he still keeps on his desktop <3).

I guess I love country music because so often it says exactly what I feel or felt or need to hear...or simply tells a great story.

Much like my experience on Prose.

I was and always will be a rockhead first, but I was raised with country music too. Here are a few artists/songs that I love:

Dwight Yoakam - "Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose (https://youtu.be/Bmun9iNJ_Lg)."

Not so long ago, my Dad played this rockin' tune for my fellow teenage friends on a Boy Scout camping trip, and he turned all of us into fans.

Hank III - "Smoke & Wine (https://youtu.be/1ZyL0TWFeLE)."

His voice sounds like his grandfather, but his music is like punk rock with twang. One of the few country artists whose albums have Parental Advisory stickers too :-)

Gary Allan - "Yesterday's Rain (https://youtu.be/AC5Dlzz44qM)."

His music has helped me through past heartache, including this song.

Aaron Lewis - "Tangled Up (https://youtu.be/HmSTjofvXwM)."

I never expected the lead singer of Staind to be decent at country music, but he is :-)

Johnny Cash - "I Still Miss Someone (https://youtu.be/0GM-1N8TfHE)."

You can't go wrong with Johnny Cash :-)