I’m driving on the 5 freeway in Los Angeles today and it’s hot as balls on a BBQ. My teenage son is next to me looking out the window as I navigate past a dimwit driver who seems to think that 47 miles per hour is a proper and safe speed in which to travel in a 65 zone. I say a few things to this driver under my breath that would win first prize for a dirty limerick contest at a biker bar and after I pass, I focus on the radio.
Yes, I still listen to regular radio and refuse to fork over any money for Sirius Radio because every time I turned to a “theme” station when I did have satellite radio, a little part of me died. I’m the girl who loves listening to entire albums in order and relishes less popular B sides and, if I’m being honest, I’m cheap and I want free tunes like when I was a kid. I want to be surprised by the next song. I don’t want an endless stream of one kind of music. It’s depressing and numbing and boring and apparently, expensive.
After exhausting my brain with NPR pieces about Taiwan and Trump and taxes, I switch to a rock station, 95.5, to see if I can get a little groove going. My kid seems sleepy, I’m getting hungry and I need a jolt of Van Halen or Zeppelin or Pete Townsend. NO music comes on but there’s a DJ talking to a caller when suddenly the caller says,
“Oh man! Not Olivia Newton-John. Loved her!”
The DJ replies, “Yeah, terrible news. F cancer! Olivia Newton-John died today at her Southern California ranch at the age of 73. F Cancer!!!”
My eyes immediately well up with tears and I feel like I may barf up my breakfast.
Then, without any preamble the DJ puts on the song “Summer Nights”.
My son turns to me and says, “Looks like we’re watching Grease tonight, mom. Whatta you say?”
What can I say but, “Hell yes!” and “Shit, you’re cool!”?
I say both.
I am so proud to even know this kid, my kid, a kid who is not only sensitive to my crushed heart but appreciates and gets a movie like Grease and has mad respect for a unicorn like Olivia Newton-John. He has been raised watching me prance around the living room, hand-jiving and singing like a broken bird. How many times have I told him that I saw Grease twelve times at The Old Mill Six Theater in Mountain View and would eat too many Hot Tamales and then crawl off to the t-shirt kiosk inside the mall to see if they had an iron-on of Sandy and Danny canoodling? So many. Countless.Too many to count. But I’ll keep counting.
Olivia Newton-John was not only my childhood idol but a mash-up of the IT girl of the 70’s and early 80’s. She was sweet and funny and gorgeous and strong-willed and self-conscious and a torrential talent. She was a hit-making, solid gold pop star, girl next door, sexy minx, bad ass. And, she was Sandy. She was the new girl who got the hot guy and then blew him off, stuck to her guns, forgave him, danced with him, won the prize that Cha Cha stole, blew him off again, said goodbye to petticoats and hello to hot pants and then, drove off into the sky with her guy from her beachy dreams.
It’s right in front of me. My friends and I memorize every song and every dance move. We have Grease parties and do the routines, taking turns as to who is Danny and who is Sandy. We beg our parents for matching satin jackets and skin-tight lycra pants and Candies high heels and huge gold hoop earrings and big, bulbous perms. Sandy is us and we are Sandy.
And now, here I am driving and dancing with my fifteen year-old son, a million moments after those days. We both sing the song together, me with my jazz hands and my teenager with his cool, casual style of not looking like he’s singing at all. He knows the words and for that I am grateful and gutted. I hold it together until the end when the song slows down and Sandy sings the line about the weather getting colder and that’s where it ends. I now sound like a crow swallowing a corn cob, nothing like Sandy at all.
I can’t believe her summer is really over. I can’t believe the song has ended. I can’t believe that Olivia Newton-John, our Olivia Newton-John, is gone.