Up in time to notice a sunrise again, today.

Remembering that I never listened to hip-hop until the road trip to Vermont.

The trip was Kartikey’s idea. The three of us – Emma and Kartikey and I – went for a walk down by the lake after dark. It must have been early spring because it was still jacket weather, but it was also warm enough to sit on the end of the public dock and dangle our legs over the edge. That was where we first talked about piling into a car and renting a house, for a week or so, in the summer.

And I’m not sure any of us expected that conversation to come true, but somehow it existed in our heads as the last time all of us would be together. Kartikey was going Out West, Adam was going to be a computer science and mathematics major in Binghamton because they had a disc golf course he liked, Emma still hadn’t decided between RIT and the UofR, and I hadn’t told anyone that I wasn’t sure about Potsdam. Victoria was mad at all of us for leaving her behind.

Somehow that made it important.

So a handful of months later we were carpooling in silence at – far too early o’clock in the morning – and Kartikey was driving, and Adam was half-asleep on Victoria’s shoulder, and Victoria was playing pop song after pop song through the speakers from her phone.

And then we picked up Emma and she then she was driving, because of course she was driving, and the music changed.

Seven and a half hours of unfamiliar songs, with the signal cutting out more and more frequently the farther north we drove into the mountains.

We’d all split the cost of an AirB&B in Vermont for something like five nights

and in between nights we went grocery shopping down the road

and played Yahtzee and Monopoly and ping-pong in the basement

and visited The Ben&Jerry’s factory, and went thrift-shopping in Burlington

and Emma and I made it to the summit of the highest mountain in Vermont even though both of us kept wanting to turn back, and then climbed back down through a thunderstorm

And then she had to leave us a day early to go to a mathematics conference in Ohio & present on her research* on graph theory.

*over the course of the research program that summer, she was only arrested one time

We drove her to the airport.

and the four of us that were left went wading in a creek near the house and climbed up the banks by the side of the waterfall and then Victoria and I ditched the boys and walked barefoot over a blanket of pine needles through the woods, for what felt like miles and miles

and they were more than a little pissed off and worried when they finally found us

And on the drive home, we listened to Emma’s playlist, again, even though she wasn’t there. Eminem and Childish Gambino and Lil’ Dicky. So strange to me, but somehow wrapped up in all of it and part of this experience

And it was on that drive that I found out that Adam can fucking sing, and not only that but Adam can rap like nobody’s business and for months I looked and looked for that one song we heard in the car and I couldn’t remember the name

And I just found it again, last week.

And now Adam is at Binghamton

And Emma went to the University of Rochester and got a B+ for the first time in her life

And Kartikey is flourishing Out West and still snapchats Victoria every day and last I heard it sounds like he met a girl

And Victoria is probably literally in this same building every day but I’m being shy and busy and working too many hours and I should probably get over all of those things and go and talk to her because that one day in the woods was a good time

And this morning, I listened to those songs on the way to work. One after the other, in all of their strange harshness and sharp corners and words that aren’t in the language that I think in, and there’s a beauty in them that’s connected to that time.

And I miss them.

There is a five-day-old box of cold pizza in the front seat of my car that cost $3 at the end of the night at the grocery store, and that is breakfast

And I’m balancing a chipped ceramic mug half-full of coffee as I’m driving, the way that Emma used to, probably still does

And I am teaching myself the words to that same song Adam sang in the car on the way home, and I am pulling over to the side of the road and jumping out of the car and running through the snow because I need to catch a photo of a rainbow over canandaigua lake even though the math center opens at 8:30 and I’m cutting it a little close

And I miss you, but I’m glad that you’ve gone on, and I am so proud of you. I will see you when I see you, if I do.

every time I hear this song, I will remember.