Photograph

Let’s rip the band-aid off today’s song quick: Photograph by Nickelback. People tend to make fun of this band, me included, but there’s something about this specific song that resonates. The lyrics don’t exactly mirror my own experiences but the mood of the song hearkens back to my old house at 55 Wright Avenue, about which I still sometimes have the most vivid and thought-provoking dreams. I think about that old house and those old days a lot. I mentioned this in so many of my previous posts but I really had a wonderful golden childhood. Properly sheltered, adequately loved, comforted by neighborhood friends with whom I still converse. I grew up across the street from the biggest park in the world: it stretched for what seemed miles and we knew every single corner of it. It was *our* park, no doubt about it. Ask Linda or Greg or Antoinette and they will agree. Almost everything we did, we did in Greis Park. It’s weird that this song brings me to tears each time. It’s a rock ballad by a rock band. But to me it’s so much more. The line, “It’s hard to say it, time to say it, goodbye, goodbye”, is the one that hits me straight in the chest. That moment in my life is, even, now, the one I consider the most pivotal and telling. It’s the moment that decided everything thereafter. And it was a moment controlled by others. And it’s a moment to which I can never return except, it seems, in my dreams.