It’s March and the AC is already gently rocking drawn shades and haphazardly hung pictures throughout our home. The heat was on two weeks ago, but it 85 degrees today. Not madness for the south, but an eccentric bit of weather to be sure.

It’s baby bedtime and I’m rocking Vienna to sleep. A sound machine muffles the remnants of neighborhood noise while an old-fashioned boom box plays a Muzak version of a song I can’t quite place.

I give it time and once the day’s to-do list drifts away and the white noise does its magic on my incessantly ringing ear, I imagine a young Stevie Nicks crooning a Landslide lullaby. Soon that instrumental supermarket monstrosity of a Fleetwood Mac performance fades and I’m left alone with the lyrics… just the darkness and that raspy ghost of a voice.

Vienna’s sleeping now. As I lay her down I can’t help but wonder the degree to which music might influence her life. It impacts everyone’s. We become practitioners, fans, or gym rats whose limbs seem immovable without their earbud-based motivation.

Friends would hardly peg me a Fleetwood fanatic. The Piano Man has always been my go-to, the soundtrack of my formative years. Still, there’s magic in this moment and so I sit, investing an evening in my baby girl and a 40-year-old song. What ridiculous fun.

Tim Toterhi is an author who approaches his writing the way he approaches his life…with a playful smile and an eyebrow up.

Learn more at www.timtoterhi.com