A year ago today, I was on a plane bound for Madrid. It was the middle of wedding season and I had spent the past three months chained to my desk. This would be my first trip across the ocean and I’d been dreaming about it since I was a kid. My mind was still hung up on the wedding that I had shot the night before and whether or not my 50 gigs of flash cards would suffice for two weeks in Europe. Even worse, a good friend had lost someone that they loved the night before and I was feeling a heavy heart for being to the wind in an airport and not by their side.
To my left, my world traveling companion had been long asleep for a while. My mind was racing and I wouldn’t dare close my eyes. When all of the sudden from the corner of my eye, I saw a flash… and another… and another. I looked out of my window and saw colors of light breaking through the clouds. The towns below were setting off what looked like tiny mushrooms of fireworks. Somehow in my haste, I’d forgotten that it was the Fourth of July. It was like Mother America was shouting as I was leaving her “Look at me, Look at me.. I’m something else!”
I thought about the night that I met songwriter Billy Joe Shaver. Billy was the guy who wrote all of those outlaw tunes that made Waylon Jennings famous. He stopped mid song-list and gave a half speech/half sermon about how grand our country was. He waved those old nubby fingers around and talked about the Grand Tetons, Joshua Tree and the Redwood Forest. He talked about how much beauty we have in our backyard and don’t take the time to appreciate it. I thought about all of the trips that I took as a kid to places like Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands. I even remembered how my parents dragged me to Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace and how it had never seemed as important to me as getting a photo with Minnie Mouse at Disneyworld. I thought about visiting Ellis Island and seeing my ancestors names carved in the wall and how much they must have endured to get to America. I thought about my grandfathers fighting in that big war.
For someone like me who has been close enough to death to appreciate the living, it wasn’t long before my heart began to turn into a sponge. It’s in those moments when your sterilized brain finally gets the signal from your chest and your heart swells up so big that you can hardly stand it…those are the moments that I find to be the most pure and the most real. I picked up my journal titled “Adventures in Europe and Morocco” and wrote these words. They’re not great, but they’re mine.
my mind is rollin’
my heart is rumblin’
out the window of this old jet liner the wind is blowin’
it’s your birthday and i’m leaving fast,
searching those foreign streets for something that will never last.
(If you’re not familiar with Billy Joe Shaver, do yourself a favor and spin a few of his tunes today. He’s all-American, Texan, missing half of his fingers and he shot a man in the face once. One day when I’m an old lady, I’ll tell my grandkids about the night that he kissed me on the forehead. He’s the real deal.)
by aimeeh
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