The first time I heard it, I was 5 years old. I didn't know the name of the song, but this image, and its music, stuck with me, followed me like Peter Pan's Shadow, with a life of its own that I couldn't catch.
For nearly 40 years, this song lived in the inside of my ears. I could hear it, see the drop of rain falling down the flower, over the leaf, but there wasn't the internet for most of my life. I had no way of finding out what it was.
Did I even remember it correctly?
Was I making the song up?
One day in Portland - and it was probably a rainy day, go figure - I was in the Borders bookstore downtown when I heard it. Just some plinky-plunky notes at first, but then I recognized it. I shouted: "Hey, what is that song?!"The clerk was surprised. I mean, it's been a minute since anyone demanded to know a Vivaldi track.
Y'all, that song followed me from 1973 to 2003, when I finally learned its name: Vivaldi's Concerto in D major, RV 93: Largo.
It was like meeting a long lost love or some relative who had gone missing.
Update
Since first publishing this in 2020, I have learned that there are so many first generation Sesame Street kids out there looking for this song, remembering the raindrop and the flower, and haunted by the tune.
Vivaldi would be shocked to hear of an entire generation of children whose lives were altered by the Largo and the leaf.