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where's johnny cash?
January 18, 2007
it's easy now, once the dice have stopped rolling, to look back and wish for things to have been different.
my dad, my real father, saw in me a future that i now know only as my lost best destiny. we were separated when i was four. we spoke again, briefly, me with an almost clinical detachment, when i was 18. when i was 29, we spoke again, on even terms, and one of the first things he asked me was if i was a musician. he said he had always watched "austin city limits," thinking he would one day see me on there.
the only comfort the last couple of days has been in my friends, and in music. i've driven further than usual, with a rediscovered burned cd of some of my favorite songs - aimee mann's cover of "the scientist", gary jules singing "mad world", jeff buckley's "satisfied mind" and "hallelujah", diana krall's "case of you." i feared my voice was gone forever, but it came back, in strength, in heart, and i felt some measure of myself again.
he knew, my dad knew, before we were separated, my heart, my best hope, my happiness, me. he told me, in that first true reunited conversation, of how at three, i'd heard an instrumental version of a johnny cash tune on the car radio one day, and how i'd turned to the daddy i loved, a love i wouldn't know again for almost three decades, and asked, "where's johnny cash?"
Posted by Rob at January 18, 2007 10:36 PM