It’s a mid-week birthday celebration. Three hyped-up ten-year-old girls are sprawled across my dark blue living room sectional, matching white Stanley water bottles lined up on the coffee table, multi-colored lights flashing on the Christmas tree in the corner. Popcorn pours into their open mouths while they expertly jam thin red straws into chilled pouches of fruit-punch-flavored Capri Sun.

Their pattering conversation drifts upstairs to my listening ears “Name each album and your favorite songs from each one…I love her outfit, it’s so Taylor…I wish I could be a dancer for Taylor…if you come in here and you like Kanye, you’re OUT…when Taylor dies, I die.” 

One of the three girls is my daughter and she’s begged to have her two most enthusiastic “Swiftie” (the term for serious Taylor Swift fans) girlfriends over tonight to watch Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour (Extended Version) on television. 

If the news somehow passed you by, I’m here to tell you that December 13th is Taylor’s 34th birthday. To mark the occasion Time Magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year has decided to release (to television) the film version of her 1.04 BILLION-dollar-generating tour.

I join the three downstairs to watch as the concert opens with a sweeping overhead view of the twinkling lights of the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. My girl and her friends are already on their feet, facing the television with their arms raised. They are ready to move, to scream, and feel the music wash over them.

Because I am an “older” mom (I was in my early forties when I had my kids) I am well aware of the vast chasm between how the world was during my youth and how it is now, for my daughter. The internet didn’t pick up speed until my college years, for example. For Swifties, 1989 is the year of Taylor’s birth as well as the title of her best-selling album.

For me, 1989 is the year I graduated high school.

While the girls continue their excited chatter I flashback to a couple of months ago, when I sat in the last row of a movie theatre watching the same Eras Tour film on the big screen, next to my daughter and her friend. It was a Sunday and we arrived 45 minutes early. Parts of the evening went as expected: the girls exchanged beaded Swiftie bracelets with others in line and excitedly discussed their favorite songs, then rushed into the theatre and settled into their seats clutching bags of candy and slushies as big as their heads.

Other parts of the show caught me by surprise: from the moment Swift stepped out onto the stage to sing the first notes of “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” her lilting yet commanding voice pulled all attention her way, and it pretty much remained on her for the rest of the concert. Swift’s uncanny ability to tell a relatable story through her lyrics, her mesmerizing yet accessible booty-shaking, her diverse backup singers, and her immense talent as a musician and entertainer were all on display…for three full hours.

I, for one, couldn’t look away.

Another revelation: While sitting there in the movie theatre singing along with my daughter, I found myself reliving not only the rocky terrain of my teenage years but my 20s and early 30s as well. As a writer currently mining her own life for stories that play into universal themes I was pulled right in—things I hadn’t thought about in years flashed through my mind, synapsis connecting, my heart beating in time to the lyrics:

“Give me back my girlhood

It was mine first” 

—Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve

“Back when we were still changin’ for the better

Wanting was enough

For me, it was enough

To live for the hope of it all”

—August 

…and a newly discovered gem (look it up…this is the one that got me up out of my seat): 

“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can

Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man

And I’m so sick of them coming at me again

‘Cause if I was a man

Then I’d be the man”

—The Man 

There in the darkened theatre I didn’t just think about those epic times, I FELT the emotions of those eras in my life. Glancing over at my joy-filled daughter and her friend, this reggae-loving Phish-head realized that even though we were singing the same lyrics their interpretation was probably entirely different. They have only ten years of experience under their belts, puberty looms on the horizon, and the world embraces them differently than it did me. Yet isn’t that the way with every generation, rolling forward together? Our situation just happens to be padded with an extra fifteen years (or more). 

Amazingly, our ages cease to matter in the face of Taylor’s gift—she seems to embody the parts of us that are unabashedly female, and powerful, and entirely unapologetic. And the thing is, we are ALL made of complex parts yearning to connect…no matter our gender, our number of days on the planet, or our skin color. 

As we walked out of the theatre I looked over at my glowing girl and said “Okay, I get it, I’m officially a Swiftie now.” 

Back in our living room my 11-year-old son (who earlier jammed his hulking headphones over his ears and fled upstairs to escape the echoing shrieks) has now come back downstairs to see the show. With wide eyes he watches the girls watching Taylor before joining them to sing along to a song he recognizes. For a moment I can’t differentiate between his high-pitched vocals and theirs.

Later, despite the Midwest darkness outside and the 33 degree temps the three girls step out onto the deck and yell into the night, their strong voices rising in unison “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAYLOR, WE LOVE YOU!!”

Their congratulations are so heartfelt that I think Taylor, wherever she is tonight, just might have heard them.