Last weekend after checking out the vintage toy store that just opened in Hixson, my husband and I visited the Goodwill next door looking for overalls, random furniture and spoons. The toys at the small shop were a little overpriced and it turns out there is a spoon shortage in thrift stores right now (unconfirmed.)
I was blessed enough, though, to find a compact disc copy of Garth Brooks’ The Hits album. Not the Greatest Hits. Just The Hits. These are them.
I’m a sucker for Garth Brooks. He lets classical motifs of melodic composition influence his music while emphasizing strong non 4/4 beats while writing some of the most poetic and complex lyrics in country music or any genre for that matter. “Standing Outside the Fire” has a callback structure to its verse lyrics that builds in every iteration only to release in a key changed growling bridge. And Garth is never afraid to use a choir. I love this guy’s music.
“Callin’ Baton Rouge” has been making my throat tighten ever since I sang to it playing on the car radio on the way home from the thrift store. I would link it but the only performance his legal team is allowing on YouTube right now is on the Ellen show and fuck Ellen.
A fiddling bluegrass track, the lyrics are about someone who is away from home and desperately wants to reconnect with those they left behind. Growing up I thought the fifth line of the first verse was “Such a strange combination of woman, man and child” which described my childhood living situation pretty well. I was old enough to remember the days when my mom and dad were still trying to show each other affection, still trying to have an earnest marriage instead of a logistical partnership.
My memory wants me to believe that one time I was riding with my dad in the car and asked to hear this album and specifically this song again. For probably the twenty fifth time. (Not autistic, why would you even suggest it?) If only my dad could hear the words and music and understand what he meant to me, what it meant when he left, maybe we could connect in that moment and even though he had to be apart from us we still were together in our want and need to be together as a family. Part of being a military brat is having your parent taken away from you for extended multiple periods of time, having no control over if and when this happens and not having any idea of when it will happen.
As the sounds flew out of the car speakers my eyes darted to my periphery to see if he noticed or appreciated or even maybe also felt the feelings I felt when I heard them. If he ever picked up on what any of it might have meant to me he didn’t show it. Despite being able to carry a tune, we didn’t sing together. Despite me playing separate instruments he only tried to teach me to play piano twice before giving up. For someone who spent his entire life playing, studying, writing, arranging, performing and teaching music he doesn’t seem to articulate any emotion associated with a single note of it. This is incomprehensible to someone like me who shakes when they hear “Freedom” or “Like Real People Do”.
Being separated from a loving parent is traumatic enough.
Ultimately believing that you are being separated from a parent who is happier without you around is worse.
Begging for affection sucks the self worth out of children. If you aren’t capable of showing other people they mean something to you, don’t subject anyone to a life of being your child.
Queer Pandemic 