With the side of my head against the cold glass,
(There is really no comfortable position to rest your head in a car)
I listened to the sounds of the eighties,
And gazed out of the window at a pitch black sky.

Driving through a desert,
The twinkle of the stars blended with the twinkle of thousands of red lights flashing,
Only on the way back did I realize these were wind turbines,
With lights to let pilots know that they were there.

I thought of a girl back home.
Inspired by the love and romanticism of “The Ultimate Rock Ballads,”
I wondered when the love that these people described would appear in my world,
And I lived in a fantasy that was bound to never happen.

I hated these car rides,
It was hard to sleep with my mom’s singing,
Despite the lullabies she sang to me as a child,
I sat in my annoyance and angst.

I hated the fact that I had to stay sitting for so long,
I could feel the blood getting trapped in my legs,
I hated the fact that I wasn’t with my friends,
I wasn’t with her.

And now, as I live apart from my family,
Constantly surrounded by the possibilities of love,
I miss the love that I felt from my parents and sisters,
A love that I failed to recognize.

As I sat in that car,
Waiting to be let out,
I was creating timeless memories,
That I will forever treasure.

Hearing my mother sing songs that came out when she was in high school,
My foot beginning to tap and the words beginning to form on my lips,
A smile came across my face,
As I heard my father’s voice harmonizing with her’s.

My sisters in the back,
Singing with little effort,
But singing still to entertain each other,
Their laughter overpowered the song.

I now realize that this is love,
These are the things that shape who I am,
Not any girl who didn’t even know my name,
And now I don’t remember her’s.

Now that I have grown past my phase of dreaming of love and forgetting about the present,
I try as hard as I can to recreate the past,
A past that I spent dreaming about a future that never came to be,
A present, left unopened.

I think deeply about the love that my parents showed me,
A love that I failed to repay,
A love that I took for granted,
A love that they sang to me.

Despite the hate I felt for sitting in these long car rides,
These are the moments I remember,
These are the moments I miss the most.

-Inspired by the song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and memories of listening to it with my family.