Twice a week during my hour and a half long choir rehearsals we take a break part way through our practice to share our answers to a little get to know you question. Usually the inquiries do not stray far from what you would expect; the typical musings on our favorite foods or tv shows. However this past week I watched my choir professor rub her hands together and bounce on the balls of her feet as she prepared to ask this rehearsal’s question. “Tell me about an artist that reminds you of your parents.” I glanced around the room and watched as my peers’ expressions softened. Slowly we snaked our way around the room listening to everyone’s answers. A chorus of singers raising their voices in a different kind of song. One girl dreamily recounted her mother’s lullabies to Carole King and another boy laughed about the way his dad listens to ACDC at top volume while he does the dishes. I sat back and observed as my classmates’ eyes lit up while they regaled us with story after story of a sort of parental musical nostalgia.
“The Cure,” I said, my thoughts flashing to car rides with my dad flush with golden summer light as he tells me how the opening guitar solo of “Push” is one of the greatest of all time. “I saw them in concert once you know,” he says with a smile. His fingers tap the steering wheel, and he whistles along to the radio through his teeth. I think of my mother playing “Pictures of You ,” and her stories of walking into her high school prom as the song resounded from huge speakers.
The next week during my English class my professor asked us all to take a moment and look around the room and then share with the class something in the space that reminded us of a person or thing in our lives. My eyes immediately fell on the Diet Coke clasped in my Professor’s hands, and I was brought back to breakfasts at diners by the beach. My thighs sticky with sweat on the plastic booth as I look across the table at my parents sipping on their morning dose of the soda. After sharing my own anecdote, I once again listened as person after person connected their pencil, someone’s green sneakers, or even the smart board to something in their own lives. I suddenly became enthralled by the magic of human memory. The way in which a piece of chalk on the board can remind someone of their middle school math class or how an untied shoelace can call to mind the image of big hands tying the lace of a tiny shoe.
At times I walk around this campus and feel so detached. I become caught up in the menial and not so menial tasks of my life, and often, I cannot seem to find a time to slow down. Yet, there are moments when I pass by a certain tree or hear the melody of a certain song, and I pause to remember the reason for its significance. It is in these instances when I am reminded of how connected we all are. I am miles away from my family and my friends from home, and somehow I see them everywhere, everyday. I hope that the people I love go about their days and experience the same remembrance I do. That they stop to admire something and think of me, and the love we share even though we are apart.