Day 11.
It's my daddy's favorite song. I've written about it before, as it has long since become one of mine.
For him, it harkens back to his younger days. He doesn't talk about his time in Vietnam often, but one time he told me this story about his first time flying in. He was in a helicopter, one of the ones we see in the movies—the ones with no doors—smoking a cigarette while looking at the expanse of jungle laid out below. He said he thought about my mom. Like so many soldiers, her picture and last letter was in his pocket. He thought about his mom and his siblings, and their prayers. He thought about Clemson and how he hoped he wouldn't get lost in what was below. And in the back of his mind the strains of King Curtis's tenor had him drifting on memories, hoping he'd find some kind of way to make it back home.
In my grown womandom, at times when I'd really miss him but didn't want him to know how much, I'd play this song. Earlier today I put it on—because it's down to the wire with this final MBA project and I have like a Ph.D. squared in procrastination—and I realized it's my reset song. I can play it on a loop and it never gets old or tired. Somehow it gets deeper and finer with each listen, like the leather on my favorite bag.
When I need to get still and level out, this is my song.
And I chuckled just now. My heart got big as I realized that this must be, at some level, what is does for him too.
Y'all know how much I love my mama, but truth is, I'll always be my daddy's boog-a-boo.
