On the way to NYC, we flipped and flopped around the radio stations, and (before I realized what it was) Joe started to flick quickly past this one song that is a quintessential Jen and Steve song from high school. I never listened to country music, but those two rednecks-in-training did…you know, sometime between when they were digging Steve’s truck out of the seasonal Lown Road (after seeing if they could make it/get stuck in February) and hanging out at his afterschool job at the Mobil.
I’ll be honest—I probably haven’t heard it since the last time they allowed me to cruise around town with them in the mid-90’s—and I most probably shed a tear or two when it played on Friday night in the car. Good thing it was dark and I didn’t have to own up to that.
It’s funny—the memory of how it felt hanging out with those two, combined with the lyrics in this song, was a good reminder for me to stay in the moment and quit trying to speed things up to “get somewhere” all the time. They were always most concerned with having fun, whether it was the most productive thing to do or not. I feel like I’m learning how to be more that way, after having gone down the opposite road for a while.
It is amazing how intense the memories are when something like this comes right out of the clear blue. It always blindsides me, and yet there is comfort from how powerful the memories still are. Even knowing what I would hear when I clicked on the video, I too went right to “that time” – for the moment before the tears started and I remembered.
And the message in this blog entry about FUN and your reminder is not lost on me either.
I know—no matter how sad it makes me feel, I still want more reminders and memories to pop up.