flipflop_diva

There was always a distance, from as far back as I can remember. The man who was there for a few hours at night, most of them spent paying bills or watching football. The man who traveled so much he missed almost every first day of school, every colorguard competition, every orchestra recital. The man who got on the phone when I no longer lived at home and then was off again to do yard work thirty seconds later.

The man who made us listen to country music in the car, even though we hated it.

He loved us, my sister and me. I always knew that. He would have done anything for us. I knew that too. But there was a distance.

We didn’t like the same things. We didn’t share the same experiences. Silences were awkward. Words often faltered.

He loved country music, football and beer. Back then, we didn’t.

And then life changed, in more ways than one. We grew up. Our tastes in music changed. Our mother died.

The three of us were what we had left.

“Let’s go to a concert,” my sister suggested.

George Strait and Alan Jackson. On a hot August night in Phoenix.

We climbed up into the stands, found our seats, ordered a beer. The lights darkened, the music started, ringing out about the cheers and the screams and the clapping.

”Do you love me?
Do you wanna be my friend?
And if you do,
well, then don't be
afraid to take me by the hand,
if you want to.”

We sang along. Smiles across our faces. We moved closer together. In more ways than one. We drove back to the hotel with country music playing on the radio.

We went to another concert a few months later. Then another. And another.

Alan Jackson at the state fair, Kenny Chesney in Vegas, Tim McGraw in San Jose.

Each concert another experience to share. Each trip another moment to call ours.

The time we had floor seats and our dad was grumpy he had to stand up. The time he rented us a party bus with a crazy driver we thought might kill us. The time I had too much drink I didn’t remember there actually had been an encore. The time we went to New Orleans just for a concert because it was too important not to see it together.

Each time, the music making us memories, bridging the distance just that much more.

•••

It’s been thirteen years now since that hot August night when we sat down in those seats. The music is still present in our lives. Mostly on the radio these days, or coming out of an iPad, but there all the same, playing in the background.

It still connects us. It still brings us together.

I hope it always will.

Written for Week 21 of