Feeling like I needed you

During my morning commute to Latinos Progresando in Chicago this summer, I was almost always accompanied by my little iPod mini, something that made taking two buses across town a lot more tolerable. I'm fond of the shuffle setting - there are always songs in my 4 GB portable collection of music that end up surprising me. On the #9 one morning, during the second leg of my journey, Goldfrapp's "A&E" came on. I had put it on my iPod but had never actually given it a listen. The somewhat corny introduction usually caused me to skip it. That morning, though, I let it play for the full duration of 3:18 minutes, and I thought that the way it complemented the cloudless blue sky and hot Chicago sun beaming through the bus windows was enchanting. 

It's kind of a sad song, really, and as I was listening to it while studying in the UAB library one day, looking out at the same blue sky from the second-floor window, now thousands of miles away from Chicago, I had to hold back tears. It's a song that not only reminds me of that summer in Pilsen, but of everything that I miss about home - not just Chicago, but Grand Rapids, too, and all of the places and people that helped raise me. It makes me miss my mom, someone who I was so close to as a child but with whom I've have had a more complicated and sometimes frustrating relationship in recent years. I see kids here being picked up by their parents from school, laughing and eating pa amb xocolata, and I realize that I'll never be in that place again. I remember when my mom used to pick me up after school and how sometimes we'd stop at Kava House to get a giant cookie. I remember how my dad came to my mom's house to take me to school at 7:05 AM every single weekday morning from the time that my parents got divorced until I graduated from high school (about 13 years), and how he would sometimes stop by Kava House beforehand to get me a coffee or spritzer. We usually didn't even talk during those ten minutes in the car. I was always too tired. At the time it all seemed very mundane and routine, but I've romanticized such experiences to an extent such that I can't help stumbling into the hole left by their absence. It's not as if I can't still get coffee with my parents, but that perfect and simple quality about our relationship has transformed into something more difficult to characterize, and I imagine that this process will only speed up as I grow into adulthood. 

I don't know what more to say about it, but I guess that I've always had these feelings, and being in Barcelona has only amplified them. It's ridiculous to be so melodramatic about everything. I suppose that music often has that effect. It brings you back to a memory so vivid and particular that a part of you would simply prefer not to leave.