When We Were Young

Vibrations from the past

When you’re young, every single thing vibrates with significance. -Phil Elverum

When I was twenty, forever was in front of me and it felt real.

My first apartment, furnished with hand-me downs and deals, the obligatory futon, and a square monstrosity of a dining table four rolling red Naugahyde lounge chairs previously housed in the local Denny’s sold to us at a yard sale when the owner remodeled.

Friday and Saturday nights were for friends and wine coolers, Tom Jones CDs and joints and clove cigarettes on the deck. It was cool. We were cool. We were clueless.

Y2K had come and gone; now I had my first cell phone, a Nokia 6910 with changeable faceplates I had many. Now I had my first car, a Plymouth Sundance with a bench seat and hubcaps shaped like daisies. Now I had my first thoughts of forever and ever and marriage and things that felt enormous.

We moved in together by default it suddenly didn’t make sense to pay rent twice when we were always together. We drove to Canada on Friday nights movies at the Colossus and short border-crossing lines (we didn’t know what crumbling towers would bring.)

I felt grown up and smart and ready. Life was so light and easy to carry.

My boyfriend bought a used Toyota MR2 he loved even though the windows wouldn’t roll down. Our days off together stretched into afternoon drives like the past in the present into the future. Nowhere to be, we savored the taken for granted privilege of only considering ourselves.

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