I remember loving the haunting beauty and delicious sadness and honesty of the song "Youth" when I first heard it years and years ago. I had recently gone through a break-up, and experiencing the lyrics was kinda like having someone peering in through your window and narrating your feelings to you.

Eventually, I got over the girl, stumbled into love with a girl who was an even better match for me, got married, and had kids. Somewhere in that journey I put this song on a playlist for my wife but then forgot about it.

And now, fifteen years later, I've been trying to write about an entirely different experience--we adopted two tweens from foster care and then several years later, they went back to live with their biological family. Last week, there was a moment at our somewhat-estranged son's graduation that felt so beautiful, bewildering, and sad that I couldn't find the right words, but I tried, and as I finished the essay, "Youth" came back into my head, still haunting, still beautiful, and somehow attached to different meanings for me.

I love how a good song can do that, how it can bend and reach us at different times with different meanings.