HERE COMES THE SUN
Andrea Gordon recalls the soundtrack to a rainy walk-a-thon,
This is part of a series revisiting the smells and sounds of summer — those unmistakable triggers that take you back to a fond memory of this fleeting season.
It’s just after sunrise on a Saturday morning and the sky over the CNE grounds in Toronto is a clear baby blue. Below, throngs of people march north, striding with purpose and a sense of adventure.
Above the excited chatter, a fitting serenade crackles from someone’s transistor radio.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it’s all right
We are at the starting gate of the 1971Miles for Millions walk, the great granddaddy of fundraisers back in the days before Canadians measured marathons in kilometres.
I was 11 and walked beside my best friend Christine and thousands of other people determined to march 32.7 miles (almost 53 kilometres) in one day to raise money “for international aid and development,” as my ripped and faded certificate of participation describes it.
One bar of that Beatles’1969 hit and I can still feel those scuffed blue and white Adidas on my feet and the rays of sunshine on my cheeks.
I remember how we set out in our jeans (no Gore-Tex or Lululemon back then), carrying nothing except high hopes and couple of emergency dimes for the phone booth.
How the excitement built as we went door to door in the days leading up to the big event and hounded every relative for pledges of five or 10 cents a mile, or from the truly flush, maybe a dollar.
I don’t recall our parents batting an eye that their preteen daughters would set out in a mob to walk the city unsupervised for 12 hours. We were two of many kids walking from a generation that grew up playing pickup games in the streets until dusk and roaming the ravines, accustomed to fending for ourselves.
But I do recall our innocence and optimism, with no thought that we couldn’t make it to the end.
Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter, Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
There’s something about summer songs from the teen years and the sense of time and place they evoke.
It’s not just references to sunshine and romance. It’s the way music from that intense stage of life becomes part of who we are.
Neuroscientists have found evidence that music from our teens gets more tightly wired into our brains than melodies and rhythms we hear later in life, Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern explains in a 2014 piece about music and memory.
Part of it is the explosion of neurological development during that period and another part may be the hormones surging through our bodies.
“These songs form the soundtrack to what feel, at the time, like the most vital and momentous years of our lives,” he writes.
Even as the memory fades, “the emotional afterglow tagged to the music lingers.”
And in the case of this Beatles song, it has lingered for more than four decades.
For most of that day in May1971, the sky was in keeping with George Harrison’s lyrics as we walked west on Lake Shore Blvd., and up and down paved roads from Etobicoke to Don Mills. Until black clouds rolled in during late afternoon.
The driving rain made our clothes stick to our skin and our shoes slosh. Some fellow walkers ducked into variety stores along the route and emerged wearing green garbage bags with armholes as makeshift raincoats. But Christine and I put our wet heads down and kept on trudging.
When the skies cleared, the transistor from the morning was nowhere in earshot. But the line still played in our minds. Sun, sun, sun, here it comes. By then, our bodies and spirits were starting to falter, despite cheers, water and snacks from the 17th checkpoint. Only three more to go.
By the time we were heading south down the Avenue Rd. hill, we were sore, teary and silently wondering which one of us would mention quitting first. Then something amazing happened. Two or three cheerful young men, who can only be described as textbook camp counsellors, came up behind us singing and joking to jolly us along. Soon we were smiling again too, as they took our hands and marched with us in solidarity down the last stretch towards the finish line at City Hall.
Kindness is its own form of sunshine.
The receipt from that day shows I raised a grand total of $52.10. Today’s Terry Fox Runs or the plethora of runs, walks and cycles for cures would raise that much in one email pledge.
But the biggest rewards were intangible. I still feel them whenever I hear “Here Comes the Sun.” Next week, the smell of marine gasoline takes Star editor Deb Yeo back to the days of a summer spent boating.