This morning’s Wednesday Morning Album Track on Red 103.1 FM was Synchronicity by the Police. I tuned in about halfway through, while I was in the drive-thru at Starbuck’s slapping on make-up. As Synchronicity II blared through the speakers, I was awash with this strange sense of nostalgia that played completely inconsistent with every other thought I’ve ever had about that album.

Synchronicity was one of the best selling albums of 1983, and its voyeuristic ‘Every Breath You Take’ was the number one song on all the top Billboard charts. I must’ve heard that song five or six times a day on the radio. It was the theme song at three weddings I attended that summer.

In the years since, the ragged vocals, edgy lyrics, and cacophonous, haunting melodies, have always reminded me of the pain of my mother’s sudden death that year. With just a few notes of “King of Pain”, and I am usually jettisoned directly back to a place in time that was cold, wet, shivering, empty, and a very slippery slope for a teenager.

I’m not even fully sure what it is that was so different about today. Perhaps it’s simply 25 years of hindsight and the kindness of time that has dulled some of the jagged edges of such piercing memories. Perhaps it was the bounty of a quarter-century of hard work and unmerited blessings that include a husband, two amazing children, and abundance in most every sense of the word.

Whatever it was, today’s reckoning with Synchronicity was completely different. Today, I recalled the year I first loved a boy. I relived the moment I knew that in some fashion or another, I would always be a writer. I remembered the birth of teenage friendships that have endured time, geography, perspective, and life choices. It was the year when who I am became more emergent than my circumstances.

It was the time of lip gloss, 501 jeans, moccasin shoes, and BIG 80’s hair.

It was a time of Synchronicity.