by Rory Feek
My job was to repair broken little black boxes from airplanes. They were electronic components in camera systems for F-4 Phantoms and F-18 Hornets—jets that Marine pilots flew and my unit helped keep in the air.
I had gone to basic training in Parris Island, then electronic school in Millington, Tennessee. Spent almost a year there the first time, then came back a few years later for another year of advanced electronic courses in ’88. They taught us how to run tests and fix the broken units that came in, but I had no idea how electricity worked. I still don’t. If I want to add a plug in Joey’s garden shed, I google it when I get to Home Depot, and YouTube tells me what to do.
It’s strange that you can learn so much and not know anything. I think the problem was that I learned a lot of high-level technician stuff but was never taught the low-level basics that go with it. I wasn’t fixing airplanes, I was fixing boxes. We never spent any time around the aircraft unless it was to walk the flight line with a gun or pick up loose gravel, so the big picture of what we were doing eluded me. Just like the big picture of what I was doing in life did.
When the girls’ mom and I split up, and ultimately when Hopie came back to live with Heidi and me, we had to make our family. A new one out of what was left. And we were trying to. But there were issues. The Marine Corps needed a backup plan. To know that if I got a call in the middle of the night that Uncle Sam needed me in Iraq or somewhere else, I could ship out at a moment’s notice and my girls would have someone to take care of them. I didn’t have that.
A nearby pastor and his wife offered to keep Heidi and Hopie, but I didn’t know them that well and wasn’t comfortable letting that happen. So I called my mom, who was living in either Texas or Florida at the time, and she said she would come. The plan was for her to live with us in Hawaii where I was stationed . . . that she would get an extended vacation in paradise and I would have a backup plan for the kids. It was a win-win for everyone, especially the kids, who were excited to have their grandmother around for a while.
So she caught a plane and was soon walking beside us down Waikiki Beach, all of us picking up shells and making plans for what would happen if I was to get called away . . . which had a pretty good chance of happening since Iraq had just invaded Kuwait not long before.
Mom’s time in Hawaii lasted a week. Two weeks tops. Not because she didn’t love the girls or me or didn’t want to be there to help but because she didn’t like the girl I was seeing at the time. She took one look at her and decided she was ready to fly back to the mainland.
It wasn’t the girl, though, honestly. It was me that Mom didn’t approve of. The girl was just an excuse. She had come to Hawaii married and separated with her husband and was shacked up with the girls and me. She still had her own place, but she might as well have been living with us.
Mom was on a plane headed back east shortly after. And I was there with a hot girlfriend who was technically still married to some other guy and no backup plan. The girlfriend as a backup plan wasn’t an option either for some reason. In hindsight, I should have wondered why.
However, it worked out that the Marines decided if I couldn’t come up with a backup plan for my kids, they’d come up with a backup plan for me. A month or two later I was on a plane headed to Texas, and someone else was inbound from the states to take my place.
I’ve not told this story before. Not for any particular reason. It’s no worse or better than a lot of other crappy stories from my past. It’s just one, I guess, I mostly forgot about. And, somehow, taking a pen and poking at the past seems to wake up sleepy memories like this one.
When I got out of the service, the girl I was seeing flew to Texas with me and Heidi and Hopie, and she and my mother became friends, sort of. We got an apartment in Dallas, and not long after, Mom decided not to come visit us there either. Not because of the girl this time, but because we wouldn’t let her smoke in the apartment. This was in the early ’90s, and the country was a million miles from where they are now with smoking. Nonsmokers were freaks at the time and treated with disrespect, at least I was.
In the end, again, it wasn’t just the cigarettes that Mom had a problem with. It was probably me. She was disappointed in the boy she had raised. I’m not sure if it ever occurred to her that most of these terrible decisions I was making with regard to love and life were pretty much exact replicas of decisions she had made when us kids were growing up with her.
And Mom wasn’t the only one disappointed in me. I was too. I knew better. I knew that I knew better, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from touching the flame . . . even though I was well aware that it was gonna burn me.
I was in the service from 1982 to 1990 and served during peacetime. The Reagan era. I was even part of the guard unit that stood post when President Reagan came to South Carolina to speak one time. I look back with pride on that day but not on most of those years.
As I mentioned, I was a pretty good Marine when I was in. At the top, or near the top, of my class in NCO school and pretty much any other training I had. And, at times, with the medals on my chest, I even looked a little like a poster-boy Marine. But inside, my Semper Fi was in question.
The phrase Semper Fi is Latin, and we first learned it in boot camp. It means “always faithful.” It is the Marine Corps motto. But it’s not always the motto of the Marines who wear the uniform. It is something that is much easier to say than do. To claim, rather than live up to the name.
I didn’t understand the power of it then. Those words. What they mean. But I do now. And though I was given an honorable “hardship” discharge when I got out of the service, I would have many, many more hardships ahead of me. And, in time, I would be the last person to ask for or expect special treatment when they came along. Instead, I would realize, just as I understand now . . . that it is in the hard things of life—the difficulties—that we grow. That we get the chance to stretch our character and be molded a little bit more like Christ and a little bit less like ourselves.
I wore my old Marine uniform for the first time in a long time this past Saturday night. Believe it or not, it still fits me. Not the same way—the chest is a little looser and the belly a bit tighter—but it fits. It was for a 1960s-themed surprise birthday party for our middle daughter, Hopie. She and her sister wore go-go boots and short dresses and their hair in bouffant. I had the name “GUMP” written in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape above the left pocket, just over the Marine Corps emblem. I told them that Indy in her little blue vintage dress was Jenny and I was Forrest Gump when he was in the army. “We get it, Dad,” the girls smiled and said. They always love to see me in my uniform.
It’s funny to put it on after all these years. My back gets a little straighter and my chest puffs up a bit and my walk has some swagger to it. All because of a uniform. And the pride I felt wearing it. That I feel wearing it still.
I’ve learned that nobody cares about what kind of discharge papers we got thirty years ago, they care about who we are now. The honor that we show others. And how faithful we are to our friends and to the ones we love. I’m so thankful that I got the chance to learn what Semper Fi means when I was with Joey. What it really means to love someone and honor them with every part of your being. It might have taken me a while to truly understand it—between hearing it the first time in boot camp in 1982 and marrying Joey in 2002 . . . twenty years—but I didn’t just say it, I meant it, and I lived it out. I’m living it out now. Still.
Better late than never.
Barber Shopping
For our whole marriage, Joey is the only one who ever cut my hair. Ever.
Every two and a half weeks or so for the past fourteen years, I’d sit in a chair in our bathroom and my wife would pull out the clippers and a pair of scissors and do her best to make her man look his best. I think she did a great job, especially with what she had to work with. Me.
I don’t think Joey ever cut hair before she started cutting mine. Except maybe her brother Justin’s in high s
chool, when he wanted a buzz cut and all she had to do was run some tight clippers over it a few times and was done. I, on the other hand, was an expert on haircuts, sort of. I had been in the service, sitting in a barber’s chair watching someone cut my hair once a week for eight years whether it needed it or not. And though I had no idea how to actually cut hair, I had a pretty good idea how other people cut mine. And so right about the time we got married, Joey and I bought some clippers and proceeded to challenge our marriage like never before.
I was a bit of a perfectionist. At times I still can be. And so she had her work cut out for her. I’m not sure who was more nervous the first few times she cut it . . . her or me. It probably took an hour and a half that first haircut, but by the time we hit the ten-year mark, I’d be in and out of the chair in twenty minutes. Maybe less.
She loved cutting my hair, and I loved that she didn’t mind doing it. First off, I think she liked that we were saving money by her doing it, and, secondly, she took pride in it. It was just one more way to serve her husband. To love him greatly. I liked it because I never had to leave home to get my hair cut . . . and I got to feel up my barber while she cut my hair (just kidding . . . actually, I’m not). We would laugh and talk and just be together while she snipped and clipped. It was quiet time for us, when we locked the world outside the door, and it was just her and me and a bunch of blondish-red hair falling to the floor.
I’ll bet I have dozens of different haircuts she gave me on film. A camera running while the clippers buzzed and the scissors snipped. It is surreal to watch those clips now. Because it isn’t like we were capturing a big moment in our lives. Us going up on stage to win an award or a special family dinner. It was just a mundane task that she would do and I had to get done. But I think that’s why those video clips are so special. Because they are life. They are our lives in a nutshell. And when you see Joey standing over me with my hair in her fingers, measuring . . . through the doorway of the kitchen . . . there’s something beautiful about it. She was so alive. Our love so alive.
Joey continued cutting my hair through thick and thin. She cut it on tour buses and in green rooms at concert venues. At her mama’s house and in hotel bathrooms. One time she even cut it in the parking lot of the Bill Clinton Memorial Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. We were on tour with Don Williams, and that evening’s show had been canceled, so Russ parked our bus in that big parking lot, and Joey brought out a chair and her clipper set and let ’er fly. We must have been quite a sight—me, all wrapped up under a plastic robe, and Joey, scissors in one hand and comb in the other. Right next to a great big tour bus with our pictures ten feet high on the sides of it.
And when the cancer came back a second time and Joey got sick, she kept cutting my hair. At least until she couldn’t cut it anymore. Then I just stopped getting it cut altogether.
I remember we were at her mama’s farmhouse in Indiana and had been there for a month or so, and my hair was easily more than a month past due for being cut. And Joey kept mentioning to me that I needed to go somewhere and get it cut. I told her that I was just gonna wait till she got better and have her cut it then. That was true, but another reason was that no one else had cut my hair, and I didn’t want to give up hope that wasn’t going to have to change. Besides, her hair had pretty much all fallen out when she had me run the clippers over it, and not long after, her sisters and daddy and best friend all cut their hair in support of her and in defiance of the disease that was trying to take her down. I had decided not to cut mine for the same reason. She didn’t get to be the best her during that time, and I had no intention of being the best me either. I was adamant not to cut my hair until Joey could do it, if ever.
The situation finally came to a head sitting beside her bed one afternoon. We had recently received another heartbreaking round of bad news and it was looking like it was only a matter of time now before the cancer was going to take her. “Please go get your hair cut, honey,” she said. Then she followed it up with a sentence I didn’t expect to hear. With all the sincerity in the world, she looked at me and said, “This is not how I want to remember you.”
Remember me? I thought. That’s not how it works. I’m the one who’s supposed to remember you. I couldn’t help but smile great big.
A week or two later she had a reprieve and started feeling better. She even got up from her bed and was able to walk from room to room with her walker and morphine drip in tow.
“Go get my clippers,” she said. And I knew she was feeling better.
My sister-in-law filmed that haircut too. It’s precious. Joey barely ninety pounds, I’ll bet, her body full of cancer . . . still loving being a wife to her husband. That was my last haircut before she passed away.
When I got back here to Tennessee and we started getting ready for Joey’s funeral service, I had a small list of things that she’d asked me to do. Make sure we had her dress and jean jacket ready, which song she wanted our friend Bradley Walker to sing at the service, and where she wanted me to go get my haircut.
She knew I was still going to be resistant to the idea, so she had me write down her wishes: go to the square in downtown Columbia and tell Daniel, who runs the barbershop there, that this was a special occasion and for him to do his best to cut it like she did.
And so that’s just what I did. The funeral was on a Tuesday, so I called him the morning before and had to leave a voice message on the shop’s machine because they were closed on Mondays. He called me back right away and opened his shop, special for me.
When I sat down in his chair, I told him what she had said, and tears fell from his eyes, just like they fell from mine. Daniel has a big burly handlebar mustache, so I’m guessing he’s not much of a crier, but that day he was. When he finished, he spun me around to face the mirror and asked, “How’s it look?” “Perfect,” I answered without even looking. And it was. The moment was just as Joey had wanted.
Since that day I have had a bunch of haircuts. By a number of different people. Daniel another time or two, another fella in his shop, and also some girls and guys in other barbershops and salons from Chapel Hill to Cool Springs. One of them was more than fifty dollars for the haircut, when you include the expected tip, and another was five bucks, and she refused to let me leave a tip. But no matter the price, they always end up the same. Me disappointed. Trying not to show it.
It’s not that the haircuts are bad . . . most have been pretty good, though, from time to time, they’re a little rough. I’m mostly disappointed that someone else has to cut it at all. That my wife isn’t here to do it. Or to opt not to if she wants.
A few months ago I opened the small wooden cabinet in the bathroom and pulled out our old clippers. The ones that Joey used to cut my hair all those years. And I pulled in a chair from the kitchen and sat down and gave myself the best Joey haircut I could. And you know what, it wasn’t much different than the ones I’ve been getting from other folks who cut hair for a living. Except for one major thing. It happened at home, like she used to cut it. And for whatever it’s worth, it was comforting to me.
This coming weekend I’m supposed to be playing a show across the driveway in our concert hall, and I’m in dire need of a haircut again. I’m not sure if I’ll head to town after porch time on Wednesday and see if Daniel or someone will give me a trim or if I’ll just do it myself. One thing’s for certain, though. It doesn’t really much matter.
The only person I am wanting to impress isn’t here.
Choo-Choo Training
. . . parenting in Pampers.
I’m in the middle of potty training Indy. She calls it “choo-choo” training. And she’s not far off because most of the time, as she’s sitting on her little potty chair, I’m sitting beside her on the floor of the bathroom thinking, I know you can, I know you can, I know you can . . . , and then when there’s success, it’s more like, . . . I knew you could, I knew you could.
Even though I went through this twenty-something years ago with Heid
i and Hopie, for the most part, this is all brand-new to me. Either I wasn’t around much when Heidi and Hopie were potty training, or I just can’t remember how we did it. So I am having to read blogs and ask friends the best way to teach her to ditch the Pampers and go “like a big girl.”
Fortunately, I have some wonderful neighbor ladies around me who are jumping in and helping with ideas and advice and even activities to make this time more fun for Indiana. And we’re getting there. On a dry-erase board that hangs on the wall in the bathroom above Indy’s potty chair is a weekly chart, divided up into days . . . with dozens of pink and blue stickers placed in not-so-straight rows by Indy every time she has success. Each sticker represents a hug and a high five and lots of excitement here at our house.
I have only been working with Indy consistently on it for the last two weeks, but Joey started potty training Indy early on. I have videos of Joey sitting beside her on the floor and reading books to Indy as she sat on a little wooden potty chair when she was less than a year old. And Joey kept doing that daily for almost the next whole year until life caught up with us and our days became filled with more pressing concerns. Because Joey worked with Indy so long, she is picking up the idea pretty quickly. Her main problem is still her core strength. Though she’s walking, she’s still a little unstable and won’t bend her legs much, so getting on and off the potty by herself isn’t easy for her to do. But little by little, she’s getting there.
I know that before too long this training will be behind us, and I’ll look back and laugh at the process we’re going through. But, right now, it’s tough to laugh when Indy gets off the potty and I put her in the bathtub for a bath and within two minutes she’s got a new “toy” floating around in the bath with her that I didn’t put there.
