by Rory Feek
I think she knows what she’s doing. She’s trying to outlast me, and so far it’s working. But I can be pretty stubborn, and, in the end, I’m committed to throwing away all the diapers in the next few months. Or at least that’s what my goal is. I have learned that sometimes you have to adjust . . . the time frame we have in mind to make big changes in our lives may not be realistic.
Learning to be a parent again . . . at least learning how to be a good one is very similar. I just want to put my big-boy pants on and be as great of a father as I believe my wife would’ve been as a mother, but it’s not that easy. I’m gonna make some mistakes. Sometimes they are little ones that clean up easy, and some of them are all-out messes.
I sent Indiana to school one day in a swimsuit that I thought was a cute jumper outfit (note to self . . . don’t Instagram these kinds of moments), and everyone got quite a kick out of it. When I came to pick her up at the end of the day, the teacher looked at me, giggling, and said, “You know that’s a swimsuit, right?” I tried to play it off, like, “Yeah, of course . . . ,” trying to act confident in my choice, like if it were to rain that day, she’d be ready for it. But both the teacher and I knew that I was still new at this and had some training of my own to do.
Sometimes it’s a little bit bigger mess that I make, like what’s happening now. Somehow, she’s picked up the bad habit of chewing her nails (her poor little nails are worn down to the nub because she chews on them so much), and I am constantly telling her not to do that. But she just looks at me like I’m from Mars. And it’s usually right about then that I’ll realize that as I’m saying it, my hand is in my mouth, and I’m chewing on my own nails. That one isn’t so easy to fix.
But like her potty training, I’m setting some goals to be a better daddy. A better papa, actually. And if I stay consistent and keep trying . . . sooner or later, I won’t have to wait for someone to high-five me every time I do something right; it’ll just be what comes naturally. It will happen without having to think about it at all.
In the meantime you’ll find me sitting beside our little one on the bathroom floor, reading books about Five Little Ducks and how Corduroy Goes to the Doctor until magic happens and we get to stand up bare-butted and pick out another sticker for the wall.
Dollars and Sense
Money can’t buy Hopie’s happiness.
“Is that a lot?” Hopie asked when we were all gathered at the kitchen table and had just opened an envelope full of “mailbox money” from ASCAP for a song I had written that was just a big old hit on the radio.
The check was for six digits. Over a hundred thousand dollars. Joey and I and our oldest daughter, Heidi, were in awe, staring at it, not hardly believing that much money could be made by writing some words that rhyme on a piece of paper. Hopie wasn’t sure what we were so excited about. She asked again, “Is that a lot?”
That might not seem like a big deal, but it is when your middle daughter is sixteen years old and in high school. Most kids that age would know better than I would how much money that is.
“Yes, honey, it’s a lot.”
“That’s great, Dad,” is all she said. Smiling. Proud of me for doing whatever it was I had done to make enough money for us to pay our bills and then some.
Joey and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing . . . Thank You, Lord, for letting Hopie still be so innocent.
She was that way with time too. It could be March or mid-June, and we’d be talking about Christmas, and Hopie would say, “Is that a long time away?” It’s not that she couldn’t sit down and figure out how many months it was between the spring and the winter. She just didn’t care. It wasn’t something that concerned her or she gave much thought to. It was the future. She was about the present. She always was. She is still.
I believe that’s how she was with money also. It isn’t that she couldn’t stop and think about how many zeros were on that check and compare it to what the minimum wage was at the time . . . it’s just that those kinds of things weren’t important to her. They didn’t matter. And to tell you the truth, they don’t much matter to her now.
Hopie is great with money. Better than me, probably. But she doesn’t care about it the way most people do. She cares that she has enough. That she can pay her bills and buy high-quality dog food for her overgrown puppy, Boulett. And that she can put some back for a rainy day. But she doesn’t long to have a lot of it or to buy a lot of stuff. It’s just not how she’s wired. She gets that from her mama, I think. From Joey. She was the same way. Practical.
I love that about Hopie. And I love that she is her own person. Not better than anyone else or worse. Just herself. Who God has made her to be. She is the champion of underdogs and the lover of the unlovable. I’d like to tell you I am the same way, but I’m not. Maybe on my best day, I make an effort to be, but on her worst day, she’s more like Jesus than I’ll ever be.
She doesn’t know that about herself, though. I think she only sees her flaws. The areas where she has fallen behind the other kids at school and never caught up. Even nearing thirty years old, she’s still trying to measure up to the other kids who are thirty. At least, I worry that she is.
We all are, I guess. It’s in all of us. The longing to be the same. To be accepted. But, honestly, I don’t want Hopie to be the same. She somehow made it through a tough childhood with the best parts of her intact. The parts that the world shamed out of most of the rest of us years and years ago. But not Hopie. She is still innocent and naive. Filled with joy that is unshakable and love that she gives freely and that doesn’t have to be returned to her. It is one of the things I am most proud about who she is. That she is so good, with nothing . . . and I mean nothing . . . but the best of intentions.
I’m not sure if Hopie will ever read this book. I’m not sure if she ever read my first one. I know she and Wendy were reading it out loud to each other for a while, but I’m not sure if she ever finished it. Or if she’ll find time to work her way through this one. It doesn’t really matter if she does or if she doesn’t. She’s part of this one and the last. Just like her sister Heidi is. They are part of me. Raising me to be who I am, just as I was trying to raise them to be who they have turned out to be.
Like Heidi and Hopie, I am still a work in progress. God isn’t finished with me yet. I’m a mess and a miracle. A sinner who’ll never be a saint. But I’m trying. Believing that the good can overcome the bad. That love always conquers fear. And it does. Even if it doesn’t look like it does.
I’m not sure how many of these books I’ll sell. Could be a good amount. Could be embarrassing . . . mostly to the publishers who printed it. But either way, at some point, I’ll be at my kitchen table, and some sort of royalty check will come in. And I hope that Hopie is there. Here. And as I look at the zeros, whether there’s a bunch of them or none at all . . . she will ask, “Is that a lot, Dad?”
And I’ll smile and say, “Yes, honey, it sure is.”
Unwritten
Life deleted.
My mother was a writer, or, at least, she wanted to be. She loved books and most mornings or evenings could be found with a cigarette in one hand and a novel in the other. Devouring stories by Ayn Rand, Dean Koontz, John Steinbeck, and many others. When I picture my mom in my mind, I think of her sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee or a can of beer—reading. Always reading. The countertop at her house was always filled with books she’d read, that she was getting ready to read. She’d buy them at secondhand stores, check ’em out from the library, or pick them up at yard sales for a dime.
And Mom didn’t just love to read, she loved to write. She filled journals for years and years with her thoughts and observations and wrote countless stories on the iMac computer that I had given her. She talked about writing a book one day. Dreamed about having her own book in the library or a yard sale for someone to find. And she had talent. From time to time she would read me something she was working on. Or put some words down in a card for m
y birthday. And you could tell it was there—the gift. We had countless conversations about writing, and I was always trying to encourage her to go for it. To tell her story. Or one that she had inside her and wanted to share.
But, in the end, no one has ever read her stories, and no one ever will. Because, for some reason, my mother made the decision to hit delete on all of her writings right before she passed away. And to throw away most of the journals and papers she wrote out by hand.
I’ve often wondered why Mom decided not to leave them behind. Maybe they were too personal. Written just for her and not for others to read. I’m guessing that must be it. But looking back—now that Mom has been gone for three years—I know all of us, my brothers and sisters and the grandkids, wish that she had more of her left here. More of her voice and her thoughts that could live on and more of her wisdom to share with us as we’re trying to make our way through life.
Even though I’d like to think I knew my mother fairly well, the truth is that she is a mystery to me. Who she was . . . I mean who she really was. I guess I will never know. I know quite a bit about her. About her growing up in Michigan and her teenage years of rebellion and also some things about her marriage to my dad and also to my older brother’s father. And I have the memories growing up with her and our lives together as they intersected through the years, but there is much more that I don’t know about her. That I wish I knew.
Maybe that is why I’m a writer. I’m sure it’s part of it. Her love for the written word was passed on to me, just like my father’s love for country music was.
I can’t imagine deleting my life’s work, though. Part of my reason for writing anything, even the words I’m writing right now, is to share them. To have a record of my experiences and thoughts about life and to have a way to pass those on to my children and their children. And to lots of other people I’ll never meet. With the hope that something in the words I write and stories I tell might be helpful to someone.
From time to time my mother would tell me about a certain book that she would say I needed to read. Not often. But now and then. She knew I wasn’t a great reader. That it was a challenge for me to find or take time to sit and get into a novel. Besides, I was and am mostly a nonfiction guy. I love stories, but my favorites are the ones that are true. About real people and the lives they lived. My bookshelf is mostly filled with biographies. The stories of John Wooden, Abraham Lincoln, Norman Rockwell, and dozens of other people whose lives or work I have found interesting.
My mother’s love of books intersected with my life deeply in the fall of 2001. I had turned an old hardware store in Mount Pleasant into a songwriting studio and was spending my days writing songs there when a woman came through the door one morning. She was a nurse who had been sent to give me a checkup for the life insurance company I had recently signed up with. I had not met her before, but she was very kind, and we chitchatted a bit as she took my blood pressure. Then she pointed to a book sitting on my desk.
“Have you read that?” she asked, her fingers aimed at the memoir All Over but the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg.
“No, not yet,” I answered. “My mom gave it to me and said I might like it.”
The lady just stared at me, then put her stethoscope down and touched my hand and said, “You need to read it.”
I was a bit startled.
“Yeah, I’ll try to, but I’m pretty—”
Before I could finish, she said, “Your mother needs you to read this book.” And she just kept staring at me, like she wasn’t going to let me up.
Now, this lady didn’t know me or my mother, but I got the impression that she knew the book, and what was inside of it must have spoken to her.
“Okay, I’ll read it.”
The next day I was in a line waiting to walk into traffic court in Franklin and had the book in my hand. I had a parking ticket that I needed to pay, and as I was waiting for the doors to open, I started reading. Within a few pages, I was mesmerized. Hooked. Drawn deep into a story that cut me to the bone. There must’ve been fifty people in that line, but, all of a sudden, I was there all alone with the book. With this man’s words about his mother and the things that she had been through for him. And for his brothers and his family. And as I read, my tears started falling. It wasn’t just a great book, it was great writing. Some of the best I’ve ever read. And the way he told his story—her story—killed me. I was shaking. Sobbing so hard I could barely see the words as I stood in that line with a room full of strangers.
For the next two days, that book went with me everywhere. I would read a chapter and reread it. I had never done that before. I would read a line, then stop and think about it. Then move on to the next one.
It was easy to understand why that lady had wanted me to read it. Because it was an important story. And it wasn’t just the author Rick Bragg’s story, it was my story. Not just about his mother, it was about mine also. A tribute to any son or daughter’s mother who went through hell trying to build a better life for her kids. My guess is that it was this lady’s story or her mother’s.
I ran into that lady in a restaurant a couple of weeks ago for the first time in the fifteen years or so since that day. I didn’t remember her, but she remembered me.
“I gave you a physical in Mount Pleasant—,” she started to say as she reached out for my hand. I cut her off.
“You told me about the book,” I said.
“Yes, All Over but the Shoutin’.” I was surprised that she remembered.
“Thank you, thank you so much,” I said. And I stood by her table for the next ten minutes telling her how much it meant to me and why.
That day in 2001 and that book did two things for me, I think. First off, it forever changed how I looked at my mother. I mean, it completely changed how I related to this person I was so closely related to. Even though my mom had made doozies of mistakes when it came to raising us, it gave me permission to love her anyway and to lift her up high. It showed me how much I owed my mother—how much I owe her still.
The other thing that day and book did was inspire me. I am still a young writer. Not in age but in experience. But the benchmark for me is still that book. Those words on those pages. The truth that he wrote in black and white. The best of the best of a bad situation.
I have had a lot of time to think about that book and the impact it’s made on me. And how, though my mother never wrote a book of her own or saved her writings for me to read, she shared her story with me . . . through that book. Or at least a part of it that she wanted and needed me to know and remember.
She may have hit delete on her computer, but in a way . . . her story remains.
Dearly Beloved
“Some people vow to keep their vow, even when they don’t have to.”
Joey’s mama didn’t just make that vow in the late 1960s when she married Joey’s daddy, she made it for life. No matter what.
Lots of folks do. Actually, I’m sure everyone does. But then, a lot of the time, something happens, and that vow loses its significance. And, instead of a vow, the words you said were more of a hope. A wish. Something that can be broken or changed if it doesn’t work out the way you were thinking it would.
And I understand it because I’ve said it myself and moved on. Most of us have, unfortunately.
But Joey’s mother, June, vowed those words and never moved on. Even when her husband, Jack, did. That doesn’t make her or him worse or better than the other. It just makes her unique to me. I have always found June to be an amazing woman, and this is one of the things that sets her apart from most people I know.
When Joey’s brother, Justin, died in a car accident at seventeen, it was hard on the family. Too hard. And when you couple that with a lot of issues that were already there, her parents’ marriage came unraveled. They divorced, and Joey’s daddy moved on. Found love and remarried. He and his new wife have been together fifteen years or so now and are doing well.
But June never moved on. She is still
in the same farmhouse and committed in an unusual way to her ex-husband. She is friends with his new wife and has been for years and years. And family get-togethers with kids and grandkids are an open house where everyone is always welcome. She knows that she played a role in their relationship ending and she can’t go back and change that. Or fix it. It is what it is. But she can take some responsibility for who she is today and the role she plays in the story she is telling with her life right now and in the future.
If you ask June why she has never dated someone else or fallen in love over the last almost twenty-five years since their divorce, she will be quick to give an answer: “I have to be available to take care of Jack if something happens to him.” Now, that was the strangest thing to hear when she first shared it with me, but after hearing Joey’s mama say it several times over a dozen years or so, I’ve come to realize that’s just part of who she is. She wants to do the best right thing even if it makes no sense to the rest of the world. And even if he has moved on and someone else is first in line to take care of her ex-husband when he gets old and frail . . . she believes it’s her responsibility if extra help is needed. And not in a “burden” sort of way. Like it’s just an ordinary part of life.
I love that. That some people out there stay committed to someone or something even when they don’t have to. It’s a rare thing to come across that kind of commitment in the world today.
Fixer-Upper
Don’t just stand there . . . do something stupid.
It made no sense to buy it. It was beyond run-down, and if it had potential, a slew of other folks who had looked at it first didn’t see any. But, for some reason, I did. Maybe at the time I saw myself in that old broken-down farmhouse. Not just living in it someday. But that the house was in some ways similar to myself. A worn-out mess and broken beyond repair, without much hope. And I think I needed that old house just as much as it needed me.
