Rain King
is the name of a song by the band Counting Crows. It's one of my favourite songs because it reminds me of a moment in time that feels
perfect
like one of those snapshots you take in your mind of a moment, a feeling, a smell, a sound so you can come back to it forever.
In that moment I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a rental car and John is driving. It's a cloudy grey day and we're on the 401 driving into Toronto to go see my Grandma before we catch a flight home to Winnipeg from Windsor, where we'd been for Christmas.
We're both deathly hungover from staying up late and having a dance party with his family so we crank the music to boost our energy. We put on August and Everything After and John tells me about how much the album means to him. His memories of singing the songs in the car with his friends when they were younger. He tells me about road trips and old friends and drunk adventures and
the everyday stuff of life where the album served as a backdrop, playing through all those times that didn't seem important in the moment but mean so much when you start to get old and have kids and can't get up to shit the way you used to.
I don't have memories of this album but I have memories of the 401. Of being in a different car with a different man in a different lifetime. The way the cities bleed into one another through the rolling hills feels soothing and familiar in a way I wasn't expecting.
We're talking and he's holding my hand and I'm thinking about how I used to feel on this highway
the sense of excited independence I felt living away from my hometown mixed with fears of
not good enough
not deserving
gonna mess it all up
that poisoned what I had and what I could have done with it in a way that I can only see now, looking in the rear-view mirror.
I turn and look over at John, who's belting out every word to Rain King and looking at me with that
incredible way he looks at me
and he smiles and squeezes my hand
and I start crying
because I was happy then, but I wasn't content
and things are different now.
