I have a confession: I cried at the Taylor Swift concert. No, not full-blown, silly drunken girl, snot running down my face sobbing. But, admittedly, a few tears flew away from me during Miss Swift’s crooning of “Fifteen.”

When I arrived at the concert with my eight-year old daughter, seven-year old niece, and my sister, the D.C. Verizon Center was already packed with (of course) mostly teenaged girls wearing shorts and cowboy boots. I had not received the memo.

My friend was seated nearby with two of her teen-aged daughters and their friends.
“This crowd makes me feel really old!” I whined.
“We are old.” She stated plainly.
“Are we?” I asked. I still have trouble grasping what to others is a plainly obvious fact. Past forty, one is most certainly not young. But, old?
“Yes.” She affirmed with a resigned shrug.

Taylor Swift marched onto the stage in a flashy version of a high school band costume. I knew right away the song was “You Belong With Me.” (I had seen the video a dozen times in my cycling class at the gym). Like all of her songs, Miss Swift tells a story through the lyrics. The story is usually of her love for a boy. This particular boy loves someone else (a cheerleader!) who is mean to him and not worthy of his affections. In the end, he comes around and falls into the long, thin arms of Taylor Swift.

A lot of Taylor Swift’s love songs do not have such happy endings. She laments in one about a boy who she loved, but who never saw her as more than a friend. This boy is one of many that broke her heart and rode off into the proverbial sunset with a hotter, more popular girl (I’m sure they’re all sorry now.)

The entire concert was like being in some kind of girl-group therapy or cult-club. At one point, Taylor Swift tells the audience that boys don’t like it when she writes lyrics about the horrible things that they do. Then she tells the audience that if the boys don’t want her to write those lyrics then, “They Shouldn’t Do Bad Things.” The entire audience erupted into ear banging cheers and applause.

What makes Taylor Swift so appealing to all these teenagers is that she is a teenager herself (or, at twenty, is close enough). She writes her own lyrics about the pains of not fitting in and not having her high school dreams come true. She is a real-life version of our 1980′s Molly Ringwald movie characters who struggled to find true happiness during the period of high school angst. We know Taylor Swift is beautiful and famous, and yet, she makes it clear that she was not always the most popular girl who got all the hot guys she wanted. Everyone can relate to her. Everyone.

Half way through the concert, Taylor Swift sat on a stool, took out her guitar and the lights dimmed. The stadium filled to the top with young—very young, teenage girls, held up the lights of their cell phones and light-glow sticks and the room twinkled and sparkled around us. As Miss Swift started her song, no one moved, but when she hit the chorus, the girls all jumped from their seats and belted out along with her:

When you’re fifteen and
Somebody tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them
And when you’re fifteen feeling like
There’s nothing to figure out
But count to ten, take it in
This is life before you know
Who you’re gonna be
Fifteen

Perhaps I had never focused on the actual words before. Maybe the second half of my light beer had gone to my head, or the earlier tribute to the war veterans who sat behind me stirred something. Or it could have been that I was overwhelmed by the incredibly bright faces surrounding me. They reminded me of myself and others I had known so intimately many years ago.—At times each seemed also to take the form of one of my own daughters standing and singing before me.

Whatever the reason, I was transported–no longer the middle-aged mother witnessing a concert meant for my daughter. A quarter of a century evaporated until at once I too was fifteen.

And then, I wept. I sat in the dark and let the tears roll down my face. At first, I cried for the boys who broke my heart. Then, I cried for the hearts I had broken. I cried for the magnificent young women all around me. I cried for their unimaginable joys and for all the heartache that none of us could shelter them from. Mostly, I cried for what is irretrievable.

“Mommy, I’m tired!” my eight-year old broke my trance. I wiped my eyes and lifted her.
“Do you think she’ll sing your favorite song next?” I asked.
“That was my favorite.” She said.
“Mine too.” I replied.

I wept at the Taylor Swift concert. I’m glad I still have it in me. Old? A little. But there is a fifteen year old girl somewhere inside who still loves to get sappy when listening to a really good love song– and sometimes even without one.