The daylight lasts a little longer each day, but 3:30-5:30 time period still feels dense and not so much dreadful, but like something needs to begin but it won’t because something else needs to rest, but there’s no time to rest. It’s not like in the summer when these hours are still thick with heat and sunlight and you know you can rest a bit with an iced-coffee because there’s still time. The daylight in these hours in the winter is longer each day but it feels like a gasp, like a gift that the world can barely produce.
The girls have finished their homework. They’ve packed their lunches and practiced piano. They’ve put on soccer practice clothes. While they wait for Jesse to come home, they play Mine Craft. There are places to sit in this room, but they both sit next to each other at the end of the coffee table and play. My brother and I did the same thing, though it wasn’t at the end of a coffee table. We were the same distance from the TV, on the floor, playing Mario Brothers on Geoff’s Nintendo. This was 1989, and I know Geoff and I fought like crazy people, but I also remember this time as a transition into a friendship rather than a sibling relationship. Both of us got sick of the Mario Brothers’ theme song that played while those guys jumped for gold coins, so we muted it and turned on Z95 or B96 on an old clock radio my parents set up in the basement for us. I can remember the two of us trying to make the guys jump in time to the music, and it was only bonus if they earned coins at the same time Young M.C. said, “Come sit next to me, you fine fella.”
Hadley and Harper get sick of the music of Mine Craft, so Hadley asks me to turn on the playlist I use to run to. I was going to turn on Miles Davis because that’s the kind of music I think one should play in the diminishing winter light, but I oblige and soon Pitbull, Meghan Trainer, and Miley Cyrus fill the room.
“Isn’t this the music from when Miley Cyrus went crazy?” Hadley asks while “Can’t Be Tamed,” plays. I love this song. I feel deliberately belligerent running along to “I wanna be a part of something I don’t know.” I feel a strange kinship to Miley when she’s says, “If you hold me back I might explode.”
“I don’t think she’s gone crazy,” I tell Hadley. “I think this is her being pretty honest about how she feels. In my opinion, this music is way better than what she was doing when she had that long, blond wig on.”
I haven’t shuffled the playlist so “We Can’t Stop” comes on next. I wasn’t a fan of this song until Geoff showed me the video of Miley singing this song with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots. They did it acapella, and something about the harmony these guys produced supported Miley and at the same time made her look and sound beautiful and professional and made me feel both sorry for and proud of her. She has talent, she wasn’t around the right people to help her bring that out is what I thought as I watched.
I added “We Can’t Stop” to my playlist after my brother showed me that video and realized that it was the perfect beat for me to run to. That was a few years ago, and now I’m faster, but when I get tired I thumb through the songs to find this one and it helps me remember where I started, and it helps me remember what my brother showed me one Saturday night.
Demi Lovato’s “Confident” comes on after a bit and Hadley starts bopping her head. ‘This is the song I play in my head every night before I fall asleep.” Harper says, “I think this is what happened after Elsa sang ‘Let it Go.’ She got confident.”
z95 was more Guns ‘N’ Roses and Poison type of music. Geoff and I used to laugh at these bands and switch the station. We were more into Bel Biv DeVoe, Janet Jackson, and Bobby Brown, and B96 was sure to play these groups more than the strange hair bands of the late 80s and early 90s. That’s probably why B96 is still around and Z95 was not. I remember hearing the announcement on the radio when Z95 would be no longer. It was B96 that told me. I remember the voice on the radio was apologetic. He said he was sorry that the two stations were at a sort of competitive war and neither played fairly. He said that at the heart of what both stations wanted to do was play good music for the Chicagoland area. I was young but I remember thinking that had to be hard to admit you’d done something wrong, and it had to be hard to admit that really, what the two different people were trying to do was play something they loved and share it with others. I think I was in my room supposedly working on homework when I heard that announcement, but I will always associate this memory with the memory of playing Mario Brothers with Geoff during the long winter that was working so hard at trying to be spring but it just wasn’t there yet and so Geoff and I played on, the oak tress outside stark, the locusts fast asleep underground, the streetlights on Gunderson flicking on at 4:30, the two of us tap, tap, tapping on control A or control B while the music played on.
Wow, beautiful♡. Takes me back!