As I slowly turned my gaze away from the maple trees, mailboxes, and power lines rushing past the blue-tinted window of our beaten, rusty 1987 Volkswagen Jetta, the trusty vehicle that had seen thirteen of the fifty American states, four of the five Great Lakes, one ocean, countless rivers, and even more thunderstorms, my eyes swept across the boxy side mirror, the bumpy black plastic of the door frame, the scuffed-up dashboard displaying a smiley face and the words “Alan wuz here” written in the dust by a mischievous index finger, on to the pulsating lights of the newly-installed radio, and past the strong set of tapping fingers on the overheated steering wheel before resting on my father’s proud and chiseled profile, with its two-day-old stubble, graying but well-trimmed sideburns, and the ever so slight incline of the exact location where the ends of his upper and lower lips met, lips that had told what seems like a million bedtime stories, doled out a million more curse words and a thousand more kisses, lips that now hinted of the memories flooding his mind as we listened to the raspy melody of Bob Dylan’s legendary voice, a melody that, as soon as the electrical connections within the car’s side and back speakers were formed and emitted as sound waves, filled the thirty-cubic-foot atmosphere of the car with indications of simpler times, friendlier music, and revolution, and in that moment as I made a visual connection with the corners of my father’s mouth and an audible connection with the sung words “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,” I thought to myself that I should savor every sliver of time such as this one, every second that dear old dad can wordlessly show me that he was once an ambitious nineteen-year-old kid with really nothing more than the dreams swirling in his head and the music spiraling though his ears, so that I may always remember to slow down as I am carried by this high-speed world, for the times they are a-changin’.

by Nora Merecicky