When I was in elementary school, my dad drove an 80s van with hideous blue velour swivel seats and curtains in the back. As a Power Rangers-obsessed child (and, if we're being honest, adult), I loved to close the curtains, spin my seat inward, and pretend I was co-piloting the Megazord when we went on long trips (the pink and yellow Rangers sat in this sideways manner, of course). 

Because autism runs in families, despite me being the first in ours to ever be formally diagnosed, these road trips always followed a very specific routine. We made the same stops every time and got the same snacks from those stops. We also listened to the same music - Elvis, Céline Dion, and Linda Ronstadt. 

Like many other queer men, I love Céline. But it was Linda who shaped my taste in music. Her fifth album, 1974's Heart Like a Wheel, was older than I was at the time that it played on repeat in that van. I certainly wasn't old enough to have any frame of reference for the lyrical material. But I could feel the ache in her voice in my bones. The twangy guitar reverberated deep in my soul. I may not have understood the words, but I understood the longing. 

My childhood was not easy. There was a lot of heartache, and a lot of hoping for things to get better and for a place to belong. As a male child in an old-school Mexican household in the 90s, these were not feelings you expressed. I held in a lot of hurt. But on those road trips, as the Céline tape wound down, my heart would rush with excitement knowing Linda's cassette was up next. For the half hour runtime of the album, I felt like someone understood the jumbled mess of pain inside of me. 

30-ish years later, my dad has been gone for a long time. But I listened to Heart Like a Wheel while I made dinner tonight. And it still takes me right back to the ugly, sideways seat in the back of his van. I can close my eyes while it plays and see him snacking on beef jerky and drumming his fingers on the wheel while he sings along. I can smell the dusty old upholstery and feel the soft velour under my fingers. As I get older and struggle to remember things about him, this is a precious gift. 

That ache inside me has never really gone away. It's changed, but it's still there. Now I try to use it to create my own art that I hope helps other people feel understood in the way that album did and still does for me.