We’re back in hibernation, due to both a terrifying covid spike across the country and to winter weather in general. I’m half Wildling and full Chicagoan which means that not only do I typically thrive in winter weather, I also love to boast about it. But this year is obviously quite different–no football games and tailgate parties, no cozy game nights with friends, no weekend matinees at the movie theater while a snowstorm rages outside. A slow creeping dread overwhelms me when I think of not being able to see my family for the holidays. I have roughly 1,000 family members, and I am heartbroken over the thought of a Christmas without a table stacked with turkey, lechon, lumpia, all the sides, five different desserts including a chocolate cake that a real American hero picked up from Portillo’s, while dozens of people cluster around the table to jockey for a good spot and fill the house with voices. 

I’ve been leaning into familiar habits, favorite movies, and hygge culture for comfort, exhausting every Nordic folk rock playlist on Spotify, becoming an emerging pro at differentiating Icelandic blues from Norwegicana. Also, I started making hand poured soy wax candles, which is the coziest of pandemic hobbies (if this is something you’d like to follow along on, my candlemaker Insta handle is @byriverandroads).

My mind feels scattered and random: should I go back to school and study Medieval History, or do I just secretly want to rewatch The Witcher? Should I learn the dance from the Britney “Slave 4 U” video or Megan Thee Stallion’s “Body”? Can my knee even handle the “Body” dance? A ghost definitely finished that box of wine, right?

I was driving home from an appointment recently on an unseasonably warm, sunny day, when a Dave Matthews Band song came onto the radio. DMB is one of those bands I stopped caring about the second the ink dried on my high school diploma, but in that moment, the sun felt warm on my skin, the air smelled crisp and fresh, and I was in a suddenly joyful mood. So I cranked that shit, singing along, remembering every word from senior year, mimicking every idiosyncratic inflection of Dave’s voice. “Goes to visit his mommy/ feeds him well, his concerns, he forgets them/ and remembers bein’ small/ playing under the table and dreamin’.” Nostalgia is a hell of a drug these days, and I’m not sure if it’s because of my age or this pandemic or the double whammy of both, but I can be absolutely floored by the opening notes to a Sheryl Crow song I totally forgot ever existed. I’m at the point where I’ve lived a long time, but I’m not quite old yet. I’m older, for sure, but I hope to still have a good stretch left laying out ahead of me. I have taken it for granted that for the most part, during my little ants-marching sized life, I’ve expected a certain level of consistency. I never once thought that there would be a time I couldn’t get on an airplane and go somewhere that I wanted to go. I didn’t think I’d have to view my newborn niece for the first time through the glass window of my sister’s back porch. I never thought that I’d be terrified of the thought of a crowded restaurant. No wonder a Dave Matthews Band song from 1994 was such a comfort to me for those four minutes of driving in surprise sunshine. I sang along with the radio with my whole body, nodding my head along to the drumbeat, shimmying my shoulders to the fiddle solo. For a few minutes, I could be 17 years old riding around in my best friend’s Geo metro, wandering without a destination, playing under the table and dreaming.