Music of the Day, 22 June 2024
i miss you more than i knew
Lately, I’ve been very focused on things in the here and now. That’s why I didn’t recognize the hints piling up earlier in the week.
This morning, I woke up with a couple of lines from another Nada Surf song playing in my mind.1 I had things to see to somewhat urgently, so I didn’t give it any thought. They returned a bit ago, and finally the penny dropped. Today’s the anniversary of my mom’s death.
“I miss you more than I knew” is an obvious connection, but there’s more that makes “Blizzard of ‘77” evocative of her. We got clobbered by that blizzard in southwestern Ohio, and I remember it vaguely and mostly fondly. I’d been going steady for a while with the guy who’s now my ex-husband; my mom liked him because he was smart and ambitious. So I was in her good graces at the time. I think she also liked the ferocity of the storm. We’d spent many a summer afternoon on the back porch, watching the lightning and rain, our desultory conversation further fragmented by thunder.
Even though we knew months ahead that her death was imminent, it was still a brutal blow when it came. For quite a while after, I didn’t know how to navigate in a world without her. I have no specific memory of it, but I suspect that when I first played Let Go, “Blizzard” being the lead track pulled me in to the album. I immediately grokked the lines “In the middle of the night, I worry/ It’s blurry even without light.”
And of course, many still miss her.
I had not made time to listen to the full album, so this was a surprise
Your recent foray into Nada Surf has had me playing their albums (some for the first time). What an underrated band. They knew how to tap into that minor-chord pop-melody emotional core that only the best songwriters can access. Thanks for the reminder to revisit Nada Surf.
I only ever had the one Nada Surf album with Popular in it and not sure I ever listened to the whole album. Thanks for putting the band back on my radar. I need to dig into them a little bit.