“Rolling down the highway like a rocket God, I’m headed to town now…”

The sun was shinning bright. It was a Friday afternoon, around four o’clock on an early fall day. The leaves were just starting to change the deep red and bright yellow colors that draw all the tourists to the small mountainous town in up state New York.

Restaurants were busy serving the leaf peepers, while the Starbucks baristas handed out the first hot drinks of the season. College students were sitting in the comfy chairs, intently staring at their lab tops, prepared for the new semester; while others were sitting outside in the chairs next to Ariel the bookstore, wearing their light jackets and enjoying the chill, as well as each others company.

Children had just gotten out of school and their parents had brought them to the park. The older kids were roughly playing tag, as the younger ones were being pushed on the swings, kicking their feet in the mud that was underneath them, while their parents made small talk over good dinner recipes and the teachers they liked and disliked at the local public school.

People had been lazily browsing through the antique shops and boutiques that I rarely actually ever go into yet are full of stylish, but incredibly overpriced clothing and accessories. The top of the white convertible is down and I was sitting in the back. I was fourteen years old and I was with my best friend and his mom, who picked us up from school and was now dropping us off in the center of town. We had become close friends the year before, and had continued strengthen our friendship over the summer. It was the beginning of my freshman year, and we were going to join the rest of our friends else in celebrating the new season and the new school year, by doing what we spent most of our time doing. Lazily wandering from Starbucks to the park to a restaurant and maybe even back to Starbucks, again, then possibly making our way to the four-movie cinema, talking, having a good time and relaxing after the somewhat stressful first week of high school.

The song “Son’s Gonna Rise” by Citizens Cope was blaring through the CD player of the car, on one of the many mixed CD’s I had made for him over the past year. Listening to this song now, fills me with images of my favorite time of year, and spending time with my favorite person, the amount of fun we had and the care we shared for each other, always come rushing back to me.