Alan Jackson Remember When

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Alan Jackson Remember When is a look back at the singer/songwriter's life; his childhood, and life with his wife and children.

Remember When charted in the Billboard Top 100 and country music charts in 2004. Jackson is well known for writing his own songs, and wrote a touching tribute to the victims of 9/11 entitled "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning".

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"The song "Remember When" by Alan Jackson means a lot to me because it really does remind me of my fiancee and I. We comment on how similar it is to us whenever we hear it, and we've even thought about using it in our wedding. It definitely touches our hearts.

I am blind and had two daughters of my own when he and I met. He took all three of us on and never once looked back even though it meant more work for him.

He never regretted his choice, and my girls see him as a father figure. We have since had another little girl together, so now we're a loving family of five. If you saw us all together, you would never be able to tell that my older two weren't his. He doesn't treat them any differently at all.

The love expressed in that song reminds me of our love, and so does the strong sense of family love. It's definitely something we plan to hang onto so we can be like the couple in the song after we grow old and our kids move out." Sonya, Toronto ON

"You know those moments in life when you've got to make up your mind what you want to do? I don't mean decisions like buying apples or carrots for the little one, though I know some folks who get mighty terrified of those kinds of choices, too. I am actually talking more about the kind of choices where there's no easy way of going back, and the potential harm you can do to yourself and maybe to others is rather significant. Alan Jackson helped me make one of those choices once, and I've never regretted it. I am not good at making hard choices. I never was. In fact, my general attitude is to always prepare for the worst, since several of the choices I've made have been wrong ones. Some years back I was two years into my first long-term relationship.

We were both very young: I was just out of university, he was just about to get his own degree, and we'd been through some good and some rough times. We both still lived with our parents though, and though we had a sweet and tender kind of relationship, it wasn't a mature attachment. In a way, I guess we were still children, belonging more to our separate families and background than to each other.

So two years into the relationship, I had a choice to make. There was another man I'd met quite recently, and suddenly the problem of what I was going to do with myself took a whole new meaning. Suddenly there was a frightening black and white choice to make. There were things that attracted me in this new guy, and the attraction sobered me to the possibility that maybe I needed -- or wanted -- to move on. For a few days, I didn't know what to do. Usually, I'd have run right to my then-boyfriend, and told him all about it. But there are things it's better not to talk about. I guess he felt it, too: there was a clear strain in the air, and I kept hesitating on whether we'd hang out or not. If he was scared or annoyed, he never said anything. Things got from bad to worse: this other guy -- who was about five years older than me and quite a different kettle of soup than my boyfriend -- invited me to dinner one evening. It was clearly a date, though he was subtle about it.

I was sorely tempted. On top of his own attraction (and let me tell you, he was definitely something to look at, and in general a wonderful person to be with), there was the novelty of it, the excitement. And of course, the hidden compliment of his having asked me out, which is something no woman can ignore completely. But of course, if I accepted this invitation, it would mean whatever I had with my first-love and 2-year boyfriend had to come to a close. Or at least it was something to talk about.

I cried the evening before making the decision. And I don't mean one-two tears, but I just started again as soon as I stopped. I was a mess. My folks knew there was something bad happening, but I just wasn't ready to confide in them, mostly because I knew what they'd say. They would all urge me to "follow my heart", whatever that meant. Well, I didn't know what my heart said, did I? That was the whole problem. So as I threw the second pack of tissues, my eyes were blotchy and my head felt the size of a pumpkin. I turned on the radio, tried to distract myself enough to at least wash my face and throw on a bit of cover make-up.

They had this show with Alan Jackson, he was giving an interview and in-between there were a few songs. I'd always liked his voice: it was warm and soft, reassuring and gentle. I used to love watching him on TV, too: the mustache and curls went really well with that hat he always wore. So I sat back on the bed, knees up, listening.

And he started singing "Remember When". And I just started crying again, because I remembered one night at a bar, when my boyfriend had first asked me what I wanted from life, and I'd said: "I want, when it's all over, to remember my life, and not regret a single thing I do." He went over to the bar, came back a minute or two later, and took me in his arms. I remembered suddenly that we had danced to this very song, and he'd sung it to me softly in my ear.

And so I knew. I am still together with my first love, and I don't regret making things clear, refusing that dinner invitation. I never told my now-husband about that other man, and I don't think I will. It doesn't make any sense: it's a small detail of the past that will never bother me again. Still, I guess this would be one of the things I'll remember at the end." Carole, London, UK