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.

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 Swfitie 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.