How to Cure Childhood Anxiety, One Sam Cooke Album at a Time
When Dad routinely came home after midnight, only music soothed my childhood soul
My early memories of life, growing up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, are fraught. We were immigrants and my parents were full-time students working multiple jobs while trying their best to parent a child they could barely understand, in a country that refused to understand them. To say it was difficult is to understate the struggle, but thanks to my daddy, Sam Cooke was part of the soundtrack. Throughout the late work nights and parental absences that eventually stoked my lifetime battle with anxiety, Cooke’s voice was that low hum in the background, an endless loop of obscenely clever ad-libs and the kind of soul-drenched wailing that can only come from the pit of a genius soul.
It soothed.
My father usually came home around midnight, right when the late-night radio DJ played the “hits.” I was too young to know about station programming, but I knew they played those songs just for us. Sometimes, when I was feeling brave, I would hide in the dark and watch my father move through the quiet while he found the music. He walked in slowly. Tired, he would hang his coat on the nearest chair and turn on the stereo in the living room. It was a wood-paneled monstrosity —…
