I’ve always been a tomboy. As a kid, I loved mudpies, treehouses, four-wheelers, t-shirts, and baseball caps. If I wasn’t inside drawing, I was outside – dirty, grass-stained, and happy. In keeping with this pattern, I wanted to cut my hair short. Short short. I don’t remember why… But, I remember that I did. And, from the back, most people thought I was a little boy. It took me twenty-five years to cut my hair short again.
I still feel guilty about breaking my brother’s arm when I pushed him too much and he slipped from the bar he was swinging on.
I don’t like the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
Now, before you go and shoot me like a pilgrim chasing a wild turkey, let me tell you a story.
I was a little girl. We were at my mom’s parents’ house in Jacksonville, FL. Warm air. Green trees. Moss hanging on the oaks in their backyard. We usually passed the time playing Uno, watching football, and listening to the women chatter and stir in the kitchen. The house was always filled with energy, people, noise, and good cooking.
At some point we needed to make the annual Thanksgiving emergency grocery run. I guess we just HAD to have cranberry sauce or something unnecessary like that. I hopped in the car with my mom and her baby brother, and we were off. Pulling into the parking lot, I figured it’d be as good a time as any to confess that I don’t like all the food we have to eat every year.
Then, my mom, motivated by her most motherly of instincts, tells me that it’s absolutely unamerican to not eat the traditional Thanksgiving meal. She then reinforces this national value with claims that the police arrest any non-eaters. They patrol all the houses and lock up those who don’t eat this traditional meal. Immediately my mind began racing with vivid images of the cops coming around every year… Of their car parking in front of my grandma’s place. Of them coming in the house to find me obstinately refusing this sacred meal. This scared the living daylights out of me.
Obviously, she was kidding.
Obviously, I ate my belly-full with my on the front door.
Obviously, the cops never came.
Obviously, I’m hoping for spaghetti this year, but I have a feeling I’ll be eating turkey.
Obviously.
Around noon today, I’ll land in Savannah, Georgia, grab a suitcase stuffed with jeans and t-shirts, and climb into my dad’s pick up truck.
To imagine my dad without a pick up truck would be like him not having a southern accent. It’s impossible.
When I was a teeny-tiny girl, my dad had an old pickup truck that he called “Nellie.” White rim tires. Step sides. Rusty tailgate. Gun rack across the back window, but no gun. He’d pick us up from his parents’ house when he got off work. We’d always stop by the local corner store on our way home. His grandfather built the store… It’s not there anymore. They tore it down a few years ago.
While stopped at that store, my brother and I would stand up in the bench seat of his truck. We’d stand up and look out over that huge dusty dashboard, watching stray dogs, cotton fields, old tobacco barns, silos, and pine trees. We’d watch how the white people and black people wouldn’t make eye contact. Or how the hispanic migrant workers would just stand off to the side of the store and watch everyone else. We’d watch how sometimes a nod of familiarity would pass between the races, but this was rare.
One night my dad drove me all the way into Savannah Georgia. This was in his new truck. Not Nellie. And I wasn’t allowed to stand up anymore, I was too big and it was too unsafe. We were headed to the Savannah Civic Center. Just me and my dad.
When we finally found a parking space and made our way inside, people were everywhere. Everywhere. The place was crowded and noisy and scary for me. I couldn’t have been over twelve years old. I’d never been to a concert before. I had no idea what to expect.
We found the bathrooms and I had to go in the ladies’ room by myself. I didn’t want to.
Then we bought a few hot dogs and drinks and found our seat. We sat in front of some older girls who screamed “Barbara! Barbara! Barbara!” through the entire concert.
I just watched. I watched the band play. Studied how they each played a different instrument but the end result seemed so… unified. I was mesmerized at the bright lights. The booming sounds. The sea of people. The applause that shook the concrete floor under my feet.
I wanted to do what I watched the band do that day.
I had no idea that going to a Barbara Mandrell concert would had such an impact on my life.
Do you remember experiencing something like this as a kid? Something that so marked you that it could change the course of your life forever? Did you know it at the time? Did you recognize the stamp it was making on your future? I didn’t.
I just called my mom (11:11am this morning) and asked her what I wanted to be when I grew up. I seriously don’t remember.
She said I wanted to be an Artist. When I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised. She was right. I remember everyone around me expecting me to get a college degree in Visual Arts, even though I decided to go into Sociology. I remember wanting to become a Christian Counselor. I remember pursuing that direction for my life.
So here I sit. Having dropped out of the seminary’s Christian Counseling degree two years ago. And what is it that I’m burning to do? I’m still creating. Now I create music instead of art. But, it all comes from the same part of me.
Here I sit, wanting to get paid to make stuff. Dreaming of being a professional song writer. Thinking about the impossibilities of going back to school for a graphic arts degree. Wondering if anyone will ever even want one of my songs. Bracing to live life like all the other “starving artists” who would rather live off nothing to create all day.
I’d rather “starve” than not create – live off less so I have time to do more. I’m realizing that I wish I did what everyone (including my mom) encouraged me to do. I wish I got that Visual Arts degree back then. At least I might be paid for creating, instead of “starving” because I do.
At the end of the day, this I know: It’s not about the money. It’s about being “me.” At 30 years old, I’m still “me” – the little girl I was back then, wanting to create stuff. I’m just trying to figure out when and why I decided I shouldn’t be… me.
What about you? What about those of you who answered that question in the post below? Why not? Why didn’t you become a firefighter or truck driver or dancer or pom-pom girl? What happened?
PS: We’re not starving. I use this term loosely… Figuratively.
