So Ealish posted a thing on Facebook, and it being about music, commenting ensued. Cindy made what I feel to be a completely unprovoked attack (joking, Cynthia) on one of my all-time personal favorite songs, Drops of Jupiter. Having not heard it in awhile, I put on my headphones and commanded Siri to play it for me. 

From the first few opening piano notes, I was immediately plunged into one of those ethereal time-in-my-life memories, where it’s not so much a specific event, but a span of time, a collection of people, places, and events, a return to a past me. It was a pleasantly cool and wonderfully enveloping hug of nostalgia that was almost palpable. 

Train’s Drops of Jupiter album will always take me back to 2007, when Dave and I were still really, truly in love, when I firmly believed that we were growing-old-together forever. So many great days and yet unknown experiences stretched out before us! All my scars of love lost and loneliness past had been healed; I wasn’t bitter, I wasn’t waiting for the floor to drop out from under me. It was good. 

That October, we went to Las Vegas for software training (AutoSprink, I miss ya), and while there, we went to the Grand Canyon on the Grand Canyon Railway. It was a fun adventure, driving from Vegas across a hot desert, through Kingman, where my grandma Ahrendt used to live, and in to Williams, Arizona. We drove with the windows down in that underwhelming Mustang rental with the dash rattle we couldn’t silence and listened to the music we loved, which I’m sure included Train; we used to listen to that song all the time. We were also seriously into Emerson Hart’s Cigarettes & Gasoline album then and listened to it often. We were always wonderfully aligned in our musical tastes. We stopped and took bad selfies with a digital camera. We were really happy.

We were also totally unprepared for the climate we encountered over the mountains; it was freezing! We had to hastily buy gloves; I still have them, and they are probably the warmest I own. Being from Florida, it didn’t seem to occur to us that it might actually be cold somewhere in October, although we at least took our favorite hoodie and fleece. 

We stayed in the railway’s beautiful hotel the night before the trip to the canyon, and at breakfast asked another guest to take a picture. It is one of my favorite pictures of us. 

The train ride was fun, so much scenery to look at. We quietly laughed at the other riders who were awed by the sight of grazing cows. We shared ear buds to listen to music together. And when we got to the canyon, oh my goodness! It was cold and blow-you-off-the-overlook windy, just ridiculous. Dave hated anything below 70 degrees, so he wasn’t too pleased, and I remember hiding out in a gift shop, trying to warm up.  

That whole trip to Vegas was pretty awesome. Neither of us were gamblers, and Dave wasn’t a big drinker, so we didn’t enjoy it in what is probably the typical sense, but we somehow lucked into incredible accommodations at the Platinum Hotel. It was a couple blocks off the strip, a beautiful suite that was far nicer than either of our homes, featuring a huge bed with a heavy comforter, an incredible jet tub, a fireplace, and a balcony. We felt like impostors staying there. We walked the Strip and enjoyed the lights. 

Eleven years on, neither of those people pictured above exist. I no longer speak to Dave. The David I loved and trusted beyond all others is gone, dead. He’s been replaced by a new Dave, and while I’m sure that is good for him, I don’t much like that man. Even that person is two or three years removed from me; he could be someone else completely by now. 

And that woman there, I remember her, but she’s not here anymore. I’m so much tougher, the remaining pieces of my heart being guarded to the point of unreachable. To borrow from a Taylor Swift song, years ago I took my broken heart and put it in a drawer, and I’m not even sure now which drawer it’s in. I no longer expect anything from anyone. I used to look at Dave and feel I was home, no matter our surroundings. Now, I am home to myself, safe inside the fortress around my heart. I shore myself up when I would like to crumble into someone else for comfort. I cannot crumble.

This is the power of a song. It’s like time travel. Inside those 4 minutes and 20 seconds, years melt away, layers of armor peel off like onion skin, scars fade, and I’m right back in Arizona, away from but still at home with my best friend and great protector, marveling at the landscape and the incredible wind. Of course it wasn’t perfect. Nostalgia, being a positive feeling, glosses over the valleys and shows us only the peaks of our memories, and that’s okay. I don’t miss him, and I don’t miss us. And despite the ugly end to our relationship, I am thankful that I have these wistful, rose tinted glimpses of the past to look at now and again. 

All I have to do is press play.

But tell me, did you sail across the sun?
Did you make it to the Milky Way
To see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated?
Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star?
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me
While you were looking for yourself out there?