I return to the bedroom with the boom box clutched to my chest.

My grandparents invested in wiring the cabin for electricity, but they didn’t opt for many outlets. I have to push the bedside table out of the way and unplug a lamp to set everything up. Any worries about the music player not working disappear when the analog numbers flash to life. I settle with the box of tapes in my lap and select the one from the top-left corner.

Nostalgia gives me a warm phantom hug at the practice of inserting the tape. After turning up the volume, I wait, knowing the tape is playing from the crackle the speakers emit.

Then …

“Helloooo, Denver! Are you ready to rock and roll? You’d better be because you’re listening to me⁠—”

Holy shit. Is that⁠—

“Silly Selena! The hottest DJ in the biz. And I’ve got all the grooviest tunes on the radio.”

Oh no. This is too much.

“Right now, I want to play one for anyone who’s ever had a crush! Sing along if you know it!”

Behind the last few words, a song begins to play, and suddenly, I’m listening to Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.” Brought to me by my adolescent mother’s first attempts at acting the DJ.

As the song goes on, I lie back on the bedroom floor, clutching my stomach as my uncontrollable laughter threatens to give me a hernia. Tears leak out of the corners of my eyes, but I’m too lost in my hysterics to bother wiping them away.

When the song comes to an end, Mom’s young voice pipes up with more enthusiastic radio-host clichés, and my giggles ramp up all over again.

Halfway through the tape, I finally exhaust myself to the point where I simply lie on the floor, panting and grinning.

Some of the joy at finding this jewel from my mother’s childhood trickles away when I turn my head enough to examine the boom box.

Despite the fact that it can play cassette tapes, it’s not some ancient machine. My guess is, it’s at least ten years old. Which means Minnie bought it long after my mom moved out.

A picture forms in my mind—of my stern grandmother in her kitchen, messing around with some of her mason jars. And at her elbow is this boom box, playing the voice of the daughter who left and never looked back.

How lonely must she have been?

And I wonder if it was anything like when I lived on my own for the first time.

My first semester of college.

The memories don’t come to me as individual days. They all flow together.

When I first left for my East Coast college, I was excited to strike out on my own. To show that I could do just fine without my family.