Now & Then

I've always loved how music has this insane ability to transcend time and space, taking you back to a specific moment when you first heard the song or it particularly impacted you. It's like weather, the way it feels like summer-- or "Jason Mraz weather" as my old college roommate put it: those first days in spring when the sky is impossibly blue and the sun is shining and you just want to ride around and listen to Mr. A-Z or something. 

I was driving home today after an X-ray (stubbed my foot really hard on the coffee table and four of my five toes were bruised and swollen). I was anxious and felt rushed and just in an irritable mood, so I was drawn to some Coldplay on the way home. I don't really remember the last time I listened to Coldplay, but today it went with the vibe. 

Coldplay always kind of makes me think of my three best friends from high school, Terry, Paige, and Christine. I had a lot of music talks with a lot of friends, and while my friend Kevin had burned me most of the CDs I had, Christine was the one responsible for giving me Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head, her chicken scratch handwriting scrawled across them in black Sharpie. I listened to those CDs to fall asleep nearly every night-- they were so soothing to me. One of us would always have them on in the background while we had long, rambling phone calls-- sometimes on four way, until the house phone died and I'd have to go into my sister's room and sit on her floor until she kicked me out (her room was the only other place in the house with a phone jack). 

These girls were my sisterhood of the traveling pants, my golden trio, my now & then crew. We had a notebook we passed back and forth to one another, filled with our musings. It was so inconspicuous, but that didn't stop us from passing origami'd notes in the hallways as well. Terry and Paige wrote weirdly hilarious little spoofs on Survivor and Lost, Paige and I wrote little play-like dramas or re-wrote scenes from "Angels with Filthy Souls" (high five if you even know what that means). Christine and I dubbed one another Padfoot and Moony, respectively, and wrote notes that way. Even though we couldn't see each other often outside of school, we still shared a wonderful bond of friendship. 

The song "Clocks" came on during my drive, and I was immediately taken back to a summer fourteen (!!!) years ago, after we had graduated high school. Our school had us do a retreat, and I remember driving out to the towne of youths with Terry, Paige, and Christine. I had borrowed my mum's red Pontiac Sunfire for the occasion-- the only one of us with access to a car-- and we blasted that song, windows down, hair blowing, singing along and banging out the piano solos on the steering wheel and dashboard, smiling and laughing. It was one of those moments where you know, even as it's happening, that you'll always remember it-- and today I did, and I smiled. 

After that, it was our song of the summer. We hung out as much as was humanly possible before we had to go our separate ways. Christine was heading to Pitt, Terry to OSU, and Paige to NYU, and I to Duquesne. We basically lived at Terry's house, amongst her large and always welcoming family, and had bonfires, played video games, swooned over Josh Groban and LOTR, and mostly just talked-- and listened to "Clocks". 

One of my favorite pictures-- one of the few I have from that summer, actually-- is the four of us sitting on Terry's roof, wrapped in blankets (I always took this fleece penguin one), looking at the stars. We used to sit there and watch meteor showers and contemplate the big stuff-- "deep, meaningful conversations" we called them. I think Sandy took this one. It's fuzzy and grainy and even lightening the exposure didn't do much for it, but we're there, not knowing that 14 years out life would carry us on crazy journeys we hadn't planned for, that in spite of writing letters and planning to visit and keeping a Live Journal together, we wouldn't be as close as we were in that moment. But in spite of that, we'd always get a random "hey, how are you" to remind us of that bond we once shared, and how even though it changes, it never really goes away. And sometimes, when you least expect it, "Clocks" will come on and nostalgia will come take your hand and pull you down memory lane for a while, and you'll smile. 

Me, Terry, Christine, and Paige 2007

Terry, Christine, me, & Paige 2016