Dear Dad,

In my memories of your momma I don’t recall her saying anything pleasant. I know, I know—she’s my grandma and I shouldn't say that about her. But life’s too short to pretend she was something she wasn’t. We’d drive up to her trailer and she usually made us feel barely welcome, like she didn’t care if we showed up or not. I knew she’d had about as many husbands as she had rollers in her hair. I remember you telling me about her beating your brother in the head with a Tonka truck over nothing, and how she stuck up for your three sisters no matter what.

Your daddy’s missing from this photo. I know he’d been dead for at least 14 years. Look at you, leaning on that car for freedom. Soon you’d be driving to Daytona to get away from it all wearing your Daytona Beach High class ring, and trading in your boat of a car for a motorcycle or an MG. You found freedom in your car and your daddy found death. Life is full of death. But you didn’t let it swallow you up.

Daytona was the first beach you ever took me to. I was 14, remember? I’d never seen my hair curl like it did on the beach. I’ve never seen you more at peace. The water was 80 degrees and calm. We let it roll over our shoulders for hours. You kept a lookout for sharks and jellyfish. Now I don’t trust the water unless you’re there.

I think about that Patty Griffin song when I think of you moving there as a teenager. “You slide down into the sea, from twelve hours on your feet, and get the tide to wash you away, thousands and thousands of days...” Did you love it back then because you felt free, away from your family? Or was it that we are drawn to nature—its magnetic pull inescapable and full of refuge? You can say that when you live in Tennessee, where hurricanes can’t get you, and tornadoes only occasionally hop around. In Florida you could skip out of town on your motorcycle if the waves got too big.

I wasn’t sad when Kathleen died. Sometimes I think I got a little bit of her indifference. I imagine she didn’t even like being called grandma. I would've loved to call your dad grandpa though. I’m glad you both look so much alike because in a way it’s like looking at him too.

I found my freedom on planes. West Africa is where I found my peace. I could watch every sunset, every star in the sky. Did your daddy go to Africa with the war? I always wonder if he did and if he loved it as much as I do. When you step off a plane and a place a world away feels like home in your bones, you start to believe in having past lives. Although if I’d lived once or twice already, you’d think I’d be better at it. I do know this though—you can’t just find peace in nature or in another country or in someone else and expect that to sustain you. Holding it hostage is a mistake. Nature changes in beautiful and awful ways, countries get occupied, and people come and go.

I want to see a photo of Ronnie dressed as a girl the day he was walking down the street and ran an Oldsmobile off the road. You two were barely a year and a half apart, same as Bubba’s boys. Life is full of repetition.

Love,
Jenny