Almost exactly a year ago, I rediscovered The Moody Blues. I randomly remembered their rather delightful song Lovely To See You, decided to use it for a tiny reel I made for the journey downtown to get my last tattoo, then promptly forgot about them again.

Something in the late summer of this year brought them back from my periphery, and unsatisfied with the various Best of The Moody Blues collections I could find online, I created a nearly two-hour-long playlist titled The Moody Blues Per My Childhood. It has been my constant soundtrack these past several months and, the way often only music (and particularly, music with uniquely nostalgic ties) can, it has brought me a disproportionate amount of joy.

As with many things in my life, this stems from an obsession of my mom’s (shout out to Karen King). The Moody Blues were a deeply seeded staple of my early childhood, linked inexorably with memories of the condo featured in our home movies and my mom’s Laura Ashley dresses and Princess Diana haircut. When I asked her how she got into the band in the early 90’s, which was hardly their heyday, she said it was through my Aunt Joan (shout out to Aunt Joan).

So on my next call to my aunt, I asked her what caused the sudden love for Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Graeme Edge, and Ray Thomas. She shared that at the time of the onset, she was living in Vancouver and studying for a masters. She was also, as it happens, incurably homesick. Home for my aunt wasn’t California – having left for Denver before I was born, she was missing the Rocky Mountain State. So when, in 1992, The Moody Blues issued a recording of their live performance at Red Rocks, it was for her like a postcard from home. A fantastic live album in its own right, it cemented The Moody Blues as one of her, and eventually my mom’s, favorites.

(Prior to this, she hilariously shared with me, her only knowledge of them had been Nights in White Satin, which she hated, because for a group of friends she spent time with in her early 20’s, it was the song the boys in the group would play on repeat whenever they had a girl in their room. A musical sock on the door, if you will, played ad nauseum. I die.)

If nothing else, I am a total sucker for nostalgia, the weepy whims of missing something, the feeling of needing a person or, better yet, a place or a time. Finding out that my own family’s ties to this underrated progressive rock band were rooted in exactly that – UGH, the full circle swell of joy it brought me! They are my favorite brand of feelings: the emotional equivalent of the French word souvenir – meaning memory – being adopted into the English language. Give it to me ALL. DAY.

This all felt very appropriate for September, which was a month of family things. After an unintentional two-year hiatus from Sacramento, I spent the last week of September staying with my family and having the best time. Sushi, vintage shopping, and laughter with my sister and her girlfriend, ice cream sundaes with one niece, an afternoon of coloring and make-believe with the other, visiting the renaissance faire for the first time in a decade with my other sister, and many mornings of tea and chats with my mom. A perfect moment for The Moody Blues Per My Childhood, if I do say so myself.

Prior to September, the entire summer had been spent fully entrenched in car things: Aaron started teaching me how to drive a stick shift, I went to more car shows than I can count, I planned scenic drives for my work. Cars on cars on cars. Then there was my trip home, and now, it’s fall! Lovely, leafy, tea-filled fall. Yesterday was a crisp autumn day and we had shepherd’s pie for dinner. This morning was cozy and spent on the sofa before heading off for coffee and errands. I have every plan to bake homemade ginger nut biscuits this afternoon, and tomorrow – currently looking to be all blue skies and chilly sunshine – we’re going to head out to Snoqualmie Falls. In a world that is feeling increasingly insane, it’s the little things. And sometimes, those things are listening to a silly little playlist while the leaves turn.