American Honey

Have you ever had a song that just spoke to you? Right now that song is American Honey. It reminds me of times long gone and a simpler life. I guess I have had the best of both worlds. I grew up all over Texas, but before I moved to Fort Worth I spent the majority of my childhood in the very small East Texas town of White Oak. When I lived there WO had maybe 5,000 people total. We had 100 people in our class. Everyone knew everyone. It is the kind of place that everyone should live in at least for a while. This song makes me think so much of that time in my life, especially the summers. Summers to me have always been magical, no matter where I was. But there was something about that place. Small towns just have a feeling. I can't explain it in words. It is just a feeling inside, that sometimes I ache for. As I listen to the song, I can feel things from those times. I can smell the chlorine from the community pool, and I can feel it still in my hair later that day as I pull my hair back and put on my softball cap to go play my game in the little field nestled among towering pine trees. You can feel summer there under the bright lights as the June bugs fly around and little kids run around carefree grasping at their snow cones. I can taste the blackberries that grew wild and we would pick and eat with a little sugar on them. I still smell the honeysuckle that grew on the vines close to my house. I remember the feel of my Sunday clothes all hot and sticky with sweat every Sunday as we went to church in the little log cabin church, and I can taste the juice from Vacation Bible School. It is the only place that I have ever had that kind of juice and it is so distinctive that it has stuck with me all these years. Oh how I long for those days. The simple times. The carefree days. I know that every time I hear certain songs or catch a whiff of honeysuckle, the same feeling will catch me. I will feel that same longing for my children to have that same experience. I will be grateful that I have had the experience to live in such a place.