Taylor Swift and my daughter: How 18 years of music became the soundtrack to our bond

MILAN – On this summer night, a month before my daughter Lucy leaves for college, she and I find ourselves among 65,000 fans in an Italian stadium more accustomed to soccer kits than sequins.

“We’re about to go on a little adventure together, and that adventure is going to span 18 years,” Taylor Swift says from the center of the stage in San Siro Stadium, her silver bodysuit sparkling behind her pink guitar on the first night of her Eras Tour in Milan.

Those 18 years also happen to span Lucy’s life. She stands to my left, screaming in the way that tells me she won’t have a voice the next day, a look of wonder in her eyes. I have seen this look before when Lucy was 9 and Swift flew above us singing “Shake it Off” during the “1989” tour, when Lucy turned 12 at the “Reputation Tour,” and again last year, when we saw the Eras Tour in our hometown. But I never tire of it. At this moment, in my eye, Lucy is both the little girl and the confident, mature young woman she has grown into, in a way that happens when you look at your own children and wonder if time even exists.

Lucy turned 18 a few days before the show – and this splurge is part birthday, part graduation, part last big trip before her summers revolve even more so around friends than family. It’s a trip squeezed between seemingly endless weekends of parties and sleepovers, along with stops at Target and Pottery Barn to get her dorm room ready.

It’s a time to get away, but also to celebrate an artist who has been a constant in our lives as long as Lucy can remember, one who has connected us in moments when there was only stubborn silence, and one whose words have changed meaning as Lucy has gone from a little girl singing Swift's “Don’t Ever Grow Up” to a teenager who connected with “Fifteen” in a way that felt almost biographical. An artist who bonds mothers and daughters both in her music and concerts in a way few singers can.

My Lucy era

Swift’s first album came out in October 2006, three months after Lucy was born.

After three boys, Lucy was a bit of a surprise, trailing four years behind her closest brother. I pictured her, like many mothers do, a mini version of me. I named her Analucia, a nod to my Mexican heritage.

Her hair was blond to my brown, her eyes blue to my nearly black. After nine years of learning about trucks and soccer, Lucy would teach me to love tutus and pink, ballet and princesses. And Taylor Swift.

She became a Swiftie at 6, when the “Red” album came out. We shopped for magazines featuring the star – “at the Grammys!” “just like us!” and cut out pictures and covered bulletin boards to decorate her room. We downloaded her music and Lucy made a video of herself singing “You Belong With Me” that remains secure on my iPhone to this day.

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My taste back then ran more indie rock, more The National than pop (even though “Folklore” and “Evermore” would later blow my mind.) As a journalist, I had edited our music writer’s review of Swift’s first headlining arena tour for “Fearless” in May 2009. He compared her to Madonna. As a child of the 1980s who grew up on “Holiday,” it felt like blasphemy, but he was the critic. We left it in.

A week later, a gold envelope with a return address that just read “Swift” in cursive arrived at our newspaper office. It was a handwritten thank you note, penned by Swift from an arena in Los Angeles, where she would play that night – thanking my reporter for the thoughtful review.

I liked her manners.

So when Swift brought her “1989” tour to Columbus, Ohio, in 2015, my best friend and I took our daughters and learned lyrics on the drive. And by the time Swift performed “Blank Space,” I was a Swiftie too.

At 9, Lucy belted out the lyrics “handsome as hell” about teen YouTube stars. She memorized songs while roller skating. And she wore the concert T-shirt to school almost every week.

The second time we saw Swift was in 2018. We drove 90 minutes north to Columbus from our home in Cincinnati, and stood on the field at Ohio State University's massive football stadium for the “Reputation” tour.

Lucy wore glasses and scream-sang through “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” from the floor. I waved an oven mitt purchased from Swift’s official merchandise with the "1989" album cover art and her autograph.

At 12, Lucy was old enough to roll her eyes.

An icon and a confident woman 18 years in the making

This summer, Lucy is old enough to go to concerts without me.

But there is something different about Swift. Something that cuts across generation, bonding mothers and daughters in a way we've rarely seen.

We live in a time when American parents adore their children. They will not be the latch-key kids we Gen-Xers were. We want to be around them, share the things they love, appreciate them, take part in them, in a way that my Baby Boomer mom didn’t. Yes, my mom went to my high school softball games, but she didn’t exactly want to go see Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” tour with me in high school.

It’s not just that moms like Swift’s music, but we also see Swift as a role model. She reclaimed her music catalog, stood up for herself against sexual assault, encouraged tens of thousands of people to vote, got us reading poetry again, and became a powerful woman hosting the world's largest music tour all while seemingly staying a kind person.

Along the way, she’s creating the kind of community and world we want for our girls – and for us. Feel your feelings, share your emotions, work hard, and have fun. And if it involves a craft – making friendship bracelets and creating elaborate and clever Eras outfits for shows and adding more sparkle to the world, all the better.

There also is a little thing about the cost of the tickets. The tickets to our first show probably cost a few hundred dollars. Tickets to the Eras Tour can sell for thousands. Most teens can’t afford them on their own, so moms agree to buying tickets if we can go, too!On this hot summer night in Italy, where security passes out free water and reflective blankets to keep people from passing out, Lucy is fully in Swift’s world.

We both are. The two of us are in our bubble of happiness in Seats 1 and 2 of Row 14, Section D. Lucy is trading friendship bracelets, taking photos for strangers with Swift on stage in the background. Everyone around us is smiling, singing together, holding each other’s places in the bathroom line, complimenting their “The Tortured Poet’s Department” dresses. There is a sense of unity, camaraderie, friendship unlike anywhere but maybe a women's bar bathroom. For these three hours, the world doesn’t exist beyond this place filled with sequins and smiles, where the sun is setting and the smell of Brazilian Crush 62 sits in the humid air.

We sing “Enchanted” as Swift floats across the stage in a new lavender dress. At this age, Lucy’s voice, like Swift’s, is different. And so is she, with a better understanding of the world and of herself.

She is singing words she now understands. The way someone in love can. The way someone whose heart has been broken can. These are feelings we share, and she is beginning to realize that I am more than just her mom.

She sings along to the “Red” era, only this time with the wisdom of having had boyfriends, including one that she is “never, ever ever getting back together,” with. I hear the passion when she sings that Swift lyric, and the laughter that comes along with it. She also sings with the hopefulness of being young.

Music, memories and a connection that can never break

Later in the show, I stand in the aisle, trying to commit this moment to memory: Lucy and the view, Swift on stage, the lights of our synchronized bracelets, the moon above. It is a moment that doesn’t fit in the frame of a camera. Lucy’s right arm reaches around me, in a way that startles me at first. A touch from my daughter is so rare now, the hugs infrequent, the times she will fall asleep next to me almost nonexistent. After what felt like a lifetime of carrying her on my hip, of her snuggling into my side, asking to be picked up when she was hurt, the absence can feel so large.

I look over and Lucy is crying. Not just happy tears, but more like the kind of cry when I can see her breathing.

The song is “Marjorie,” Swift’s heartfelt tribute to her grandmother, a song about grief, but also about hope. “I should have asked you questions, should have asked you how to be,” Swift sings. “Asked you to write it down for me.”

Lucy twists the gold ring she wears on her right ring finger, one that belonged to her grandma, my mother. Twelve years ago, my mom killed herself. Lucy was just 5. My mom was the one who would play Uno for as many games as my kids asked, who read “Chrysanthemum” over and over, the one who was always there. The two were so close that to this day I learn things about my mom from Lucy’s memories.

She leans into me – and I hold onto this feeling.

I have tears now, too.

“I love you, bunny,” I say.

She mouths back, “I love you more.”

Taylor Swift and saying goodbye to an era

Lucy is singing “Wonderland,” one of the acoustic songs Swift played toward the end of the show, mashed with “The 1.”

“We found wonderland, you and I got lost in it. We pretended it could last forever,” she sings. It’s the last summer before she leaves for school and is saying goodbye to friends – and me.

After the show, we will get lost for a moment on the Italian subway on our way back to our Airbnb when I get off at a wrong stop. We are tired. And hungry. And she is frustrated with me.

My phone loses connection and somehow we are standing on an empty street.

This is the first big trip since her dad and I divorced almost three years ago. And I am navigating alone, feeling in a way that I must both inspire and protect her.

I follow the trail of sequins back to the subway, and ask questions until we follow the underground maze back to the same train line we were on. We were there all along.

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The Taylor Swift roadmap

Back home in Ohio, I check my emails for confirmation that the quilt we ordered for Lucy’s dorm room has shipped. I text her an update while she’s on vacation with her dad and her friends at the beach. I don’t get a response.

I’m listening to TTPD as I write this. It helps.

I send her a photo of a therapy dog on the floor of the Eras Tour.

“My friend is at the Warsaw show and look how cute,” I type.

“Awwwwwww,” she replies.

In many ways, Swift’s songs have been a roadmap for Lucy and me over the years. They have given words – and poetry – to our feelings and allowed us to talk about them in a way once removed from real life. The betrayals and breakups, but also the love and friendship.

Swift has been there through the transition to middle school, there to allow Lucy to dissect “The Man” for her brothers, or to feel less alone with the lyrics to “Clean.”

There was a very long drive for college visits last fall when we reached a certain point in Tennessee where we were both hungry and tired – and stressed – and there were no helpful words. But playing the complete Taylor Swift playlist as we drove the next few hours meant things were soon OK. (Never listen to “Never Grow Up” on a college visit, unless you want to cry so hard it’s difficult to drive.)

And that is the bond. There has always been Taylor. Even if we are fighting, we can send each other Taylor memes or Easter eggs about what Swift might be working on next.

And nights when we are apart, we swoon over secret songs play on the tour – and share clues we’ve seen on when Rep TV might come out. Immediately, she feels less far away.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Taylor Swift's music connects moms and daughters unlike anyone else