The Hunting Party

The car was so hot I had all the windows up. The AC was blasting and trying its best to breathe cool air onto my face and the face of my two year old as we waited, and the radio played a sound tarnished but loud. 

I was not paying attention to the music. The  heat was making sweat glide down the side of my baby’s face. Inside the store my husband was getting ice for the cooler filled with our picnic. Soon we would be at the river, basking in the coolness of glacier melted water. 

Until then, I was trying my best to get the sippy cup of water near my child’s mouth. 

Absently my knee was moving, tapping to the rhythm in the background. 

My baby smiled wide, perfect little teeth like pearls, half naked in the car seat his head began to bob and I found myself in a heat wave mosh pit as we head banged to the sounds coming from the car radio. 

My husband coming into the vehicle laughed, watched us rocking out for a moment before passing us both Popsicles already threatening to coat us in their rainbow melt. 

“Who is this?” I asked as our baby and I nearly cracked our heads in our wild grooving. 

My husband listened intently. His ear was to be trusted, where I was picky and particular with my music my tastes ranging over all genres but very selectively he had a more varied palette. 

After about ten seconds his smile was wide and with him and our baby smiling at me it struck me how alike they were, the same dimples, the same shining teeth, the same quirk of the brows. 
“It’s Linkin Park.” 

I scoffed, offended. I would recognize it instantly if it were Linkin Park. I knew every lyric, every rhyme. 

I had belted out every scream. 

He turned the music louder, blasting out of the speakers, and I listened, frozen in place by Chester’s familiar shriek, Mike’s pounding poetry. 

My heart raced and I stared slack jawed at my now smug and grinning husband. 

“It’s…. it’s….it’s….” I could not get the words out, they stuck in my throat, the excitement was buzzing through my veins.

“That’s a new album.” He finished for me. “And they sound fantastic.”

I scoffed again. 

“Of course they sound fantastic.” I wrinkled my nose at him as I scrambled to find the new piece to the sound track of my life. 

Motherhood made it hard to keep on top of things, sleep, eating, proper personal hygiene. I had in the fray of parental battles not realized I would be happily listening to a new album. 

We blasted it until our speakers protested all summer long, and when our second was born the baby learned to sleep through the throbbing bass. 

It had listened to it relentlessly in the womb, I figured the sound must be familiar. 

Even now, when we dance and make supper the glass in the windows shake while my toddlers mosh in the kitchen. 

It doesn’t matter that the words of The Hunting Party are mourning, are wounded, are forlorn. The energy that courses through the halls of my house is the same that understood my fear and worry as a child in Hybrid Theory. 

Tearing me apart with the words you wouldn’t say
And suddenly tomorrow’s a moment washed away
‘Cause I don’t have a reason and you don’t have the time
But we both keep on waiting for something we won’t find

I sing the words, my kids dance. One day they’ll ask me why I listen to music that has words that could be interpreted as so very sad…. so very strained. 

And I will be able to grin, and I will be able to tell them some stories, like the ones I have told today. 

Sometimes we sing our sad, let it out, let it go. 
So In the end, we can have joy.