Brought you this gift memories, words intertwined with melodies. I'm sure we've had our friends and our enemies but I don't like to reminisce like this….any more than you do….any more than you do
My earliest memory of my mother and father was of them walking hand in hand down the cobblestone pathway that led to our house back in Ohio. Mom giggling frantically while Dad whispered words that tickled her ears, his lips pulled back in a sly grin.
Mom had blue eyes I think…maybe green…no, I'll go with blue. I learned once in my English class that the first answer we put down is most likely to be the right one unless we totally didn't prepare for exams and just thought we could come in say a little prayer and Houdini things. I tried that once. It didn't end well. Dad looked a lot like me, same blonde hair, same green eyes, same nose, but his hair was longer, ponytailed and he kept a wispy beard. When I was really little I used to twirl my fingers in it or trap my little green soldiers in it. Since it hung down to his collar bone I could do that. He let me do that. Ever since he got out of the military he said that he kept his beard and long hair as a privilege. Soldiers had buzz cuts and clean shaven faces. As proud as Dad was that he served his country I was sure that he wanted to forget what it cost. On Friday nights in December he'd hike up to the local bar and drink a shot for every one of his lost comrades. Mom would call him a cab at midnight. She didn't like his drinking but he only did it when he was drinking to his friends. Mom just wanted to help him cope anyway she could.
But one December night, Dad skipped out on the drinking and dragged me with him to the hospital. It was mom, she was sick, and on top of that she was pregnant. I didn't understand what that meant at the time, I was only four and definitely not the brightest crayon in the box, but Dad said it meant that I wouldn't be the only kid in the house anymore. Hours passed and Dad and I watched the clock until finally the doctor came out and told us that we were allowed to go in. Mom had a new baby. A girl. Katie Louis Knight. I had a sister.
For the first few days since we had her home all Katie did was cry. Constantly. Inconsolably. She made me wish I had been born deaf or that I could magically go deaf because her cry was the worst sound I had ever heard. Like nails on a chalkboard and someone gnashing their death. Total torture. But I learned to love her, and Dad taught me how to get her to shut up.
"Music," he'd say confidently and pulled out his twelve string guitar "music is the way to every woman's heart." he started to play and Mom howled from the kitchen. Muting the strings "Well, every woman but your mother" he winked at me "I actually had to work for her."
I smiled then reached out to touch the guitar but Dad held my hand away.
"Not so fast," he told me then reached behind him and into the cushion of the old chair he was sitting on. "Here," he handed me a ratty old looking book. "This will help you."
I bobbed my head. I never was much of a talker.
"And this," he gave me the guitar "I want you to play your sister to sleep."
I gasped and glanced up at him warily. Who did he think I was? Ray Charles? I couldn't learn an instrument, I didn't have a lick of rhythm, and learning in one night? Well, that was just crazy talk.
"Go on," he turned my around then gave me a push in the direction of Katie's room. "You can do it. I believe in you."
Sighing, I realized I really had no choice. I crossed my fingers hoping that maybe, just maybe Katie would hear my awful playing, call it torture, and agree to go to sleep just to avoid hearing it anymore. The first song I ever played her was "Ragtime Lullaby". After that I never wanted to put the guitar down. Ever.
I would come home from kindergarten, do my homework like lightening, then run into Katie's room and play the guitar to her. After church on Sundays, I would take off my tie, go into Katie's room, and play the guitar to her. If we were going to Gram and Gramps house I would pack up the guitar, make them sit down in the family room, then play to them until they were lulled off to sleep cuz' they were old and old people did that when they heard music. I was always a weird little kid but when I played my guitar it felt like that didn't matter anymore, even the kids at school liked my playing, the cool kids like Matthew Nelson and Johnny Funk. They thought I was just the greatest thing ever.
Then suddenly the music stopped, and so did the memories. I stored the twelve string in the attic, tossed the old song book underneath my pillow, and refused to play anymore. What was the point? What could the music really even do?
Car accident. Original as ever my parents were coming home from a Sunday Night meeting, minding their own business, and they were killed in a car accident by some stupid guy who just wasn't watching were he was going. The police told my grandparents that death was instantaneous and like I always remembered seeing them doing, my parents were holding hands when they died. I didn't doubt that they probably took their last breaths staring into one another's eyes just like real lovers did. They'd walk the cobblestones paths of heaven still smiling.
Six years old and angry with God, I wanted to smash the last piece of my parents that I had available to me. The twelve string. I didn't want to lull my two year old sister to sleep any longer and I definitely didn't want to go to church because it was Sunday and I didn't get how God was going to allow my parents to die on His day. Like, wasn't he supposed to be working his hardest on that day? I thought so. My gramps insisted that I not smash the guitar because it was special. I didn't want to listen to him but I was so upset that I just nodded my head, cried, and crawled up to the attic to put it away. I never wanted to see the thing again. Cursed the day it was made, because every time I saw it I saw my parents, my father telling jokes, and my mother laughing or scolding him from the kitchen. The memories were just too much. The year 1993 was just a terrible time all together.
In 1997, my grandparents decided we were moving to Florida. They packed up Katie and I, all of our stuff (including the guitar), and made the trip. An old white house with a porch and American flag hanging outside on a self-installed flagpole was the first place we lived. I had a lot of memories from that house. I made my first real friend, a boy who lived next door with his grandparents named James Diamond.
At first, I wasn't sure how I felt about him. He talked a lot about hockey and hair products. Honestly, for a while I couldn't decide whether or not he was masculine or down right confused. Vain was the word that I decided upon but the more I got to know him, the more I came to realize why. James had memories too. His parents, Felicia and Michael Diamond were divorced business people. Felicia owned a cosmetic company out in Minnesota and Michael had some kind of shipping company. In easier terms, they were just filthy rich and self-absorbed. James told me that to his parents looks were everything and if you looked wrong then you'd never make it in the real world. I laughed at him. What the real world was, was all too real to me. It seemed like his parents were the ones who didn't know what that was. Real people didn't have much time to worry over the little things like looks and packing, real people worked 9 to 5's and wore what was available because their money wasn't being wasted on designer fashions, and most of all I believed that real people raised their kids and if they dumped them off on somebody else they just didn't love them.
I made the mistake of saying this all out loud. For a while, James and I weren't friends anymore.
Fireworks went off on the night of December 31st 2003 as we invited in the New Year. My grandparents and James' drank coffee and sat on the porch while they watched me, Katie, and James set off bottle rockets and firecrackers. James and I were friends again, but only when he decided that. I still didn't talk too much and since James went to public school and I was homeschooled by my grandmother there really wasn't all that much to talk about. Even Katie went to school in town so she could easily hold conversations with James, laughing and giggling at everything he said. I knew he had a crush on him, and since he genuinely seemed to care about her and looked out for her I never made death threats or told him he better watch his P's and Q's. He was a way better brother-figure then I'd ever be. That was for sure.
I met a girl that summer and because she was pretty and I wanted to impress her (James and Katie talked me into it) I pulled out the twelve string. I played the song "Hanging by the Moment" by Lifehouse. She giggled at me, said I was a good singer. We spent the rest entire summer together until school started again and she had to go. Her family was from Texas and she was simply vacationing, but she told me she would never forget me. Her name was Josephine Taylor. I never heard from her again, and because I was sure it was bad luck I put the twelve string away again.
The rest of that year was another blur in a blur of memories that I wished I never had. A few years later I graduated from high school and decided to go to college in the city. The small town life was nice but I was getting sick of the same faces and places and I just wanted to forget where I was from again. My amazing SAT scores got me into UF one of the leading universities and I did my four years. I met more girls but wouldn't play guitar for any of them. In fact, I didn't tell people I played or for that matter even knew any music. All of them just assumed I was a quiet kid from up north who was incredibly book smart but socially inept. They didn't understand and I didn't want them to either. I just wanted to get out. University was bringing me one step closer.
Early 2008, I was when I graduated from the University. I left with a diploma, a major in History, and a couple of new friends that I actually planned on keeping. That year I met Hortense Logan Mitchel (we all just called him "Logan" because he hated him name, Hortense was his father's name), Carlos Roberto Garcia, and Emilia DiCanio. Logan was a keyboarder from North Carolina, Carlos a bass player from Siesta Key, and Emilia was a singer and drum player from New York. Just like my first impression of James, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about them but they grew on me and I slowly opened up about my guitar player. We formed a band and from that point on became inseparable. I'd never loved my twelve string more.