Grandma SHOWED me country
There are songs that can take you back to a place faster than almost anything.
When I was a kid, my parents listened to gospel music in the car. I knew the songs. I knew the voices. But most of the time I had no idea what the people singing them looked like. I didn’t even know their names.
At my grandma’s house, it was different.
Country music was always around. There were albums by the record player and country music videos on the TV.
At grandma's house the people singing had faces and names.
It's funny to remember now, but some of those voices sounded an awful lot like the ones I heard on the gospel station.
For a while, I genuinely thought Conway Twitty had two careers. He sang romantic songs to older women through my grandma’s television, and then apparently sang about Jesus on my parents’ AM gospel station.
Turns out that wasn’t Conway.
It was Rusty Goodman.
I eventually learned that Rusty had written and sung a bunch of the songs I grew up hearing. Songs my parents sang in church.
A few days ago I went out to the barn and made a video remembering one of them, “Leavin' On My Mind”
As I sang the lyrics I was transported to a wooden pew at a little church in Clayton NC.
My dad always carried a change purse in his pocket. Do you remember those? It was a plastic rubbery flat egg looking thing with a slit in it. When you squeezed the ends of it, it opened up and you could retrieve a coin. My dad's was blue. When he would get to the lyric in this old song that said “I couldn't care less if I could buy it all with a solitary dime”, he would reach in his pocket, squeeze the little flat blue egg open, and pull out a dime to show everyone.
Gosh me and my siblings would roll our eyes at each other with a knowing smirk anticipating the presentation of that dime as dad pinched it vertically between his thumb and pointer finger and showed it to the congregation. Today the memory makes me smile.
I made this video of me remembering grandma's house and this old Rusty Goodman song the day before I heard that Dolly Parton had died.
When I heard Dolly had passed I immediately called my sister. She has always loved Dolly and I knew her heart had to be broken by the news. I also made a short video for instagram singing her song “I Will Always Love You” that you can find on my instagram account. But honestly, when I think of Dolly, I think of Christmas. When I got home I put on her Christmas album with Kenny Rogers and listened for a bit.
I was sitting on my couch, but my mind went right back to my grandma and Christmas with my mom's side of the family.
I could see myself there at Aunt Becky's log house all decorated for Christmas, surrounded by family, listening to Dolly and Kenny on vinyl singing “Christmas Without You”, “With Bells On”, “Hard Candy Christmas”.
Here I am at 47 listening to those same songs stream through my bluetooth speaker as Dolly and Kenny sing me back to being 11 years old playing duck hunt with cousin Ronnie on a console tv while the old folks (who were younger than I am now) get dinner ready to serve.
Then came the part that caught me off guard.
So many of the people in that memory are gone now. That house belongs to another family. I can remember it clearly, but I can’t go back to it.
My sister and I talked about that on our phone call. I told her I just felt sad. Our family has experienced so much loss and even the slightest bit of grief today can sometimes snowball for me. She shared something from her devotional in Philippians 4, where Paul talks about guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
I think there’s something in that for those of us who find ourselves looking backward in a way that keeps us from moving forward.
It’s okay to miss what was. It’s okay for an old song or memory to make you miss your grandma. Your parents. A sibling. A spouse. A child. A simpler time. But we have to be careful not to spend so much time looking back that we miss what’s still here.
Pull the people you love a little closer.
Laugh. Try something new. Make some mistakes. Try again.
Look around and be grateful.
Don’t let grief convince you that all the good is behind you.
There is still good here.
“Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’”
Ecclesiastes 7:10
Here’s that video from the barn and an old Rusty Goodman song that takes me back.
Warren Barfield
P.S. Make today a day you’ll be glad you were here for.