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anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country.
[georgia o'keeffe]
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Over the last few months, I've started to write for a paycheck. I cannot tell you what this means for me.
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This came at a time when my other friends were graduating from college, getting actual jobs as teachers or nurses or beginning grad school, and this made me feel like that weird aunt, the one with the itchy rugs who buys quinoa in bulk and boycotts sulfates.
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A friend called this our freshman year of life, and though technically I'd graduated from college a year early, I claimed this year as my freshman year of life too. During my extra year, I moved to a city I loved for its mountains and the way people were always laughing in the street. I worked on a conservation corps, where I backpacked all the time and grew to understand life as this thing, this incredible thing, that I'd judged and dismissed like a boy who I then grew to love to oblivion.
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Then I left for a town further west, with brick streets and late sunsets, live music and natural food. I lived on a farm and grew a lot of broccoli and sunflowers, and lived with good, wild people who helped me understand things. But at the end of the summer the cold set in, and I began to crave the desert. I wanted to be back in Texas, eating tortillas dipped in gooey honey on outside porches, seeing people who'd known me since I was a child in supermarkets.
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So I came home, not sure about what was next. And farms and conservation corps saved my life, but I wanted to prove I could do it too, you know, get hired by an organization that wasn't always forgetting to pay me. I wanted to write. And Dad was the one who said, Write.
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How glad I am to have him to talk to during this season of my life, an unexpected gift, since I didn't know I was going to come back home for these months. How comforting it is, to have him explain things to me, read over my stories and tell me he likes them, that I'm a good writer, that this is something I can do, something I'm good at without bending or faking.
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This came at a time when my other friends were graduating from college, getting actual jobs as teachers or nurses or beginning grad school, and this made me feel like that weird aunt, the one with the itchy rugs who buys quinoa in bulk and boycotts sulfates.
-
A friend called this our freshman year of life, and though technically I'd graduated from college a year early, I claimed this year as my freshman year of life too. During my extra year, I moved to a city I loved for its mountains and the way people were always laughing in the street. I worked on a conservation corps, where I backpacked all the time and grew to understand life as this thing, this incredible thing, that I'd judged and dismissed like a boy who I then grew to love to oblivion.
-
Then I left for a town further west, with brick streets and late sunsets, live music and natural food. I lived on a farm and grew a lot of broccoli and sunflowers, and lived with good, wild people who helped me understand things. But at the end of the summer the cold set in, and I began to crave the desert. I wanted to be back in Texas, eating tortillas dipped in gooey honey on outside porches, seeing people who'd known me since I was a child in supermarkets.
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So I came home, not sure about what was next. And farms and conservation corps saved my life, but I wanted to prove I could do it too, you know, get hired by an organization that wasn't always forgetting to pay me. I wanted to write. And Dad was the one who said, Write.
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How glad I am to have him to talk to during this season of my life, an unexpected gift, since I didn't know I was going to come back home for these months. How comforting it is, to have him explain things to me, read over my stories and tell me he likes them, that I'm a good writer, that this is something I can do, something I'm good at without bending or faking.
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He leans over the keyboard and he has that dad smell, like freshly printed newspapers and his leather wallet. He makes jokes about how ridiculous AP style is so I don't feel stupid, one large calloused finger tap tap tapping the tiny down key like he's keeping time. Even when I was a kid, I thought Dad's hands looked too big for his profession.
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My point is, I'm surprised by how much I needed this season in my life. My other point is, everyone needs a father in addition to an editor. It's not good enough to have someone pointing out your mistakes if they can't make sense of the story behind them. I know there are people who have never known this comfort, and for them I am breathless with sorrow.
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My point is, I'm surprised by how much I needed this season in my life. My other point is, everyone needs a father in addition to an editor. It's not good enough to have someone pointing out your mistakes if they can't make sense of the story behind them. I know there are people who have never known this comfort, and for them I am breathless with sorrow.
