For me, the month of November holds significant sweetness. The beauty of fall lingers in the last of the curling leaves on bitter cold branches, and the vibrant reds and golds of October give way to the sleepy hues of coffee brown and mulled wine red, all chilled beneath a blue charcoal sky. Christmas is only a month away, and the world seems like it is finally nestling into a perpetual coziness.
For Taylor Swift fans, November is always a pretty big deal. It's the month in which Taylor has given us a few of her albums (Fearless; Reputation) and some major press tours for albums released in the latter part of October. (Taylor Swift; Speak Now; Red and 1989). Of course, it is the month that, I'd argue, inspired her most autumnal album Red. (We'll talk about that album in the next post, but suffice it to say, I can never think of maple lattes, lost scarves, and falling leaves without thinking of the allusions to Taylor's romantic and bittersweet Thanksgiving spent in upstate New York, as presented in the fan-favorite song "All Too Well".) It seems that Taylor Swift really has a thing for the autumnal months. And can you blame her? It's truly the most wonderful time of the year. This is one of the reasons why I think she and I would be really good friends.
November is also the time of year when I think most of my cousin, Brielle, who now lives in Boston. I haven't seen her in over a year, but I miss her very much.
Growing up, Brielle was the closest thing I had to a sister. We were both the oldest of three kids, and both of us had little brothers, so our chosen sisterhood was really something special. Brielle was the maid of honor in my wedding, and her Maid of Honor Speech chronicled the nearly three decades of stories that the two of us share. From handcuffing ourselves together at the end of one family gathering so that we wouldn't have to say goodbye, to endless summer days on my Uncle Dave's boat, Brielle and I have many incredible memories. And, for a brief stint, November was the time when the two of us would plan our yearly Girls' Weekends.
We'd spend two full days shopping and giggling, spending way too much money, and lamenting our status as broke graduate students. Sometimes, we'd dress up and hit the town, flirting with strangers in bars, and dancing until closing time. One time, we raided my too full closet to see how much we could sell to a second hand store that paid cash on the spot. We made $68, and promptly used that for cab fare and drinks at The B.O.B. Other weekends, we'd hunker down at my apartment in our pajamas, watch Christmas movies, drink fancy cocktails and decorate my living room in preparation for the upcoming holiday season. We always drank copious amounts of coffee, and ate too much lemon cake for breakfast. And, Taylor Swift always provided the soundtrack of the weekend.
There are a lot of moments, specifically, that I connect with memories of Brielle and me and Taylor Swift. Belting out "We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together" in my apartment when Brielle broke up with that sleazy guy from Detroit who had been stringing her along for months. (2015) Cranking up the Fearless album on summer drives. (2009) Using "Shake It Off" as THE anthem to bring me the courage to tell an incredibly rude bartender that, yes, blind girls go clubbing, too. (You can read that full adventure in a blog post from May of 2015 on this blog! Be warned, there is course language in that post.)
Yet, this blog post, dedicated to the music of the Speak Now album, is one that is most fitting to talk about my beautiful cousin Brielle, and how this particular selection of Taylor's music is especially remembered on cold November nights.
On Thanksgiving night 2010, Taylor Swift had a concert special on NBC. She was promoting her new album Speak Now, and Brielle and I couldn't wait to watch it together. We were both on Thanksgiving break from college, and we rushed down into my parents' basement to watch the concert together. The album itself had been released a month prior, so we both already knew quite a few of the songs. It is a beautiful album, the first in Taylor's career where she wrote every single song by herself. The songs are beautifully diverse in both the stories they tell, and the genres with which they are told. "Haunted" and "The Story of Us" are both edgier in their gritty-guitar hooks and words of sharp-and-broken relationships. "Last Kiss", and "Dear John" rely on the familiar swooning of soft drum-kicks and acoustic guitar strings where Taylor is most at home. And songs like "Never Grow Up" and "Innocent" offer something akin to alternative folk, as they weave stories of childhood memories and the universal need for forgiveness and grace.
For all it's variety, though, I still think of Speak Now as a country album at its roots, with experimental pop music on the periphery. And the lead single, "Mine" showcases that perfectly. That night, as we watched the the concert, we were swept up in the opening guitar strums and Taylor's sweet, "Ah-ah-a-ah-ah" of the song's intro. Brielle clutched my hand. We both LOVED that song, "Mine". To this day, I still think it is one of Taylor's best "storytelling songs", and one that I found quite relatable. The lyrics detailed how I envisioned my future coupled self. Taylor sings about college, and leaving small towns, and taking on the world with the guy she would hopefully spend the rest of her life with. In the second verse, she hints at the "adult" nature of their relationship with: "And there's a drawer of my stuff at your place." But the most important lyrics come soon after that. "You learn my secrets, and you figure out why I'm guarded. You say we'll never make my parents' mistakes."
Taylor's parents divorced was she was a young girl, and this song reveals that her fears about relationships, and her mistrust of love might just come from having a "careless father", and that she can't trust the stability of commitment because leaving is "all I've ever known."
I'll never forget what Brielle said at this moment. "This song is my life," she said. "Taylor is singing about my exact experience."
You see, like Taylor Swift, my cousin Brielle is a child of divorce. Her parents' marriage ended suddenly and unexpectedly in late summer of 2003. Brielle was just 12 years old, and as we sat in my parents' darkened basement all those years later, she was able to use the lyrics from the pages of a pop singer's diary as a tool for her own expression of grief and mistrust.
"You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter. You are the best thing, that's ever been mine." Taylor sings to her imagined future lover in the chorus.
"I want that for myself," Brielle told me. "I want someone who will fight for me and stay with me, even when I am so afraid that they won't."
Since then, Brielle and I have had a lot of conversations about how divorce shakes a child's trust in the world around them. I believe that it truly is a trauma, even if mainstream society hasn't been quick to ascribe that weightiness to children from broken homes. Brielle and I have spoken about how living through a parents' divorce -- especially a Christian divorce -- thwarts belief in the possibility of lasting love and commitment. How it encourages the constant spiraling in and out of relationships with the "wrong guys" because of a fear of expecting something good. Divorce, in short, is incredibly painful for the children who feel forgotten and discarded by the promise of a stable, two-parent home.
But there is hope after divorce, both for the parents, and the children, and Brielle has also been able to live her life as a testimony to that truth. The strength that she forged through this experience, has shaped her into the bold woman that she is today. I'm so endlessly proud of her.
A lot has changed in the last decade. Brielle and I are both older and wiser in life and in love, but we still love a good Taylor Swift song. I have been married for nearly three years, and I can tell you that marriage is absolutely nothing like a Taylor Swift love song. And that's a good thing. But, sometimes marriage is absolutely everything like a Taylor Swift love song. And that's also a good thing. The beauty of a songwriter is that they are able to distill the whole spectrum of human emotions into three minutes, and make you feel as though you are not alone in the work, and the struggle and the triumphs and sorrows of a life willingly shared with another person.
And this fall, my beautiful cousin Brielle finally gets to embark on this beautiful and hard journey of commitment and trust, when she marries the love of her life. Adam, I am so thankful for you. I am so thankful that you point Brielle to Christ, and that you love her and challenge her; that you encourage her, and that you protect her. You learn from her, and you teach her. She is absolutely in love with you.
Know this. Marriage is hard work. It will be some of the hardest work you will ever endure, and there is an entire culture out there that would lead you to believe that it's an archaic waste-of-time, worth abandoning at the first sign of unhappiness or discontent. Don't believe it. Because, marriage is also one of the happiest things you can ever have. It is good. Through marriage, God will sharpen you both, bring you unspeakable joy, and endless bouts of comfort and friendship. Marriage is a beautiful gift. It isn't the ultimate gift -- you both know that -- but it is a beautiful gift. I am thrilled for you both.
The other day, I received Brielle and Adam's Save The Date. It was a picture of them, moments after Adam proposed. They are cinematic in their embrace, true love radiating all around them, as they stand by the water's edge. And I couldn't help but think of the engagement scene in the Taylor Swift music video for "Mine". The lyrics from that scene are below Brielle and Adam's engagement picture.
