country roads

I don’t get nostalgic. I’m not a proud mountaineer. I don’t wear the gold and the blue. I don’t sing “Coal Miner’s Daughter” like I used to.

“Oh I’m proud to be a coal miner’s daughter.
I remember well, the well where I drew water.

Nothing’s left, but the floors,
Nothing lives here, anymore.
‘Cept the memories of a coal miner’s daughter.”

I don’t sit around the fire with my coffee mug, like a delicate flask, thinking about ‘the good old days’. I never have. I probably never will. I don’t listen to “Country Roads” and get excited or feel like singing along. Even though I think I should.

But I do stop at this little intersection. A lot. I stare to the left of me. At the countryside and the winding road and the tractor in the distance. And when I do my heart is filled with something. I just don’t know what. I don’t know if I’ll ever know what. But it’s there. And it reminds me of a little boy, running through the mountains, with no daddy. And no shoes.

And it contents me.