And Then It Happened

I was driving to work tonight, listening to Bon Iver's "Re:Stacks." It was nearly 6 o'clock, so had been dark for more than an hour already. As I noticed the barely-there, flurried example of the little snow Tennessee ever gets, dancing and swirling about on the pavement and in the light from passing cars, something happened. I was washed over with a rush of nostalgia. Almost sorrow. I had an image of riding in a car, surrounded by a crisp, blue nightfall in Michigan, doing much the same thing; staring at the swirls of snow, feeling safe and comfortable and hazy. I'm sure that it wasn't so much a specific memory, as remembering that feeling, which I experienced many times, when growing up there. More than once, I have had overwhelming feelings of loss, from leaving that place, but am usually acutely aware of when it is truly missing my teen years and the friends I had then, and when it is just missing...there.

I don't know what it is about that song. There is an inherent tone of longing for days gone by, regardless of the lyrics, and perhaps only for me. Nothing in the words seem to suggest nostalgia. I suppose it comes across by simpler means.