I can't recall the first time I heard it, but I can certainly remember the most poignant. My best friend from college invited me home for Thanksgiving our senior year. I'd gone the past two years, but this one was different--her dad had died that September. In my family, Thanksgiving is my parents, my brother and I (now my sister-in-law and not me since they live close and I don't). For my best friend it's a tribe event: cousins, aunts, uncles, grand-parents step cousins, and on and on.
There was nothing definite about the evening, but things were clearly askew from years passed. Her aunt (her dad's sister) had just been diagnosed with the same illness he had so there was a touch of false cheer in the air. I also have a clear snapshot in my mind of my best friend, her younger siblings and her mom all sitting together on the couch and there was a space, like they'd unconsciously left room for their father.
Anyway, we're driving home from the evening, back to her place. Mom at the wheel, 15 year-old sister in the passenger seat, 19 year-old brother in the back with the two of us 22 year-olds. Pretty silent in the car for the first ten minutes of the ride--everybody lost in thought, my guess is about the same thing--when, of course, American Pie starts on the radio. Well, as you'd guess, we all started singing along...to the whole thing. Even her little sister knew all the words.
I don't know, somehow it broke all the tension cause once the song ended life returned to everybody in the care and instead of being silently introspective we were all talking and laughing about the good things that happened that night and "wouldn't dad have gotten a kick out of..."
So yeah...that's pretty much what I think of when I hear American Pie.
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There was nothing definite about the evening, but things were clearly askew from years passed. Her aunt (her dad's sister) had just been diagnosed with the same illness he had so there was a touch of false cheer in the air. I also have a clear snapshot in my mind of my best friend, her younger siblings and her mom all sitting together on the couch and there was a space, like they'd unconsciously left room for their father.
Anyway, we're driving home from the evening, back to her place. Mom at the wheel, 15 year-old sister in the passenger seat, 19 year-old brother in the back with the two of us 22 year-olds. Pretty silent in the car for the first ten minutes of the ride--everybody lost in thought, my guess is about the same thing--when, of course, American Pie starts on the radio. Well, as you'd guess, we all started singing along...to the whole thing. Even her little sister knew all the words.
I don't know, somehow it broke all the tension cause once the song ended life returned to everybody in the care and instead of being silently introspective we were all talking and laughing about the good things that happened that night and "wouldn't dad have gotten a kick out of..."
So yeah...that's pretty much what I think of when I hear American Pie.