She was also talented. She loved to draw and could sketch for hours, which is why I’m not all that surprised that she eventually became an artist. These days, she makes her living working with stained glass, handcrafting replica Tiffany lamps that cost serious money and are popular with high-end interior decorators. She’s built herself a pretty good online business and I’m proud of her, not only because of what she meant to me growing up but because life has seriously kicked her in the teeth in more ways than one. There’ve been times, I’ll admit, when I wondered how she was able to keep going at all.
Don’t get me wrong about my aunt and uncle. Even though Paige watched after me, they always did the important things. We had decent beds and got new school clothes every year. There was always milk in the refrigerator and snacks in the cupboards. Neither of them was violent, they seldom raised their voices, and I think the only time I ever saw them have a glass of wine was on New Year’s Eve during my teenage years. But farming is hard work; a farm, in many ways, is like a demanding, ever-needy child, and they didn’t have the time or energy to go to school events or bring us to a friend’s birthday party or even toss a football back and forth on the weekends. There are no weekends on a farm; Saturdays and Sundays are just like every other day of the week. About the only thing we really did as a family was have dinner every night at six, and it seems I remember all of them, mainly because every dinner was exactly the same. We’d get called to the kitchen, where we’d help bring the food to the table. Once we sat, and more from a sense of obligation than actual interest, my aunt would ask my sister and me what we’d done in school. While we answered, my uncle would butter two pieces of bread to go along with his meal, no matter what we were having, and he’d nod silently at our answers, no matter what we said. After that, our meals were marked only by the sound of utensils clicking against the plates. Sometimes, Paige and I would talk, but my aunt and uncle concentrated on finishing their meals like another chore they had to complete. Both of them were generally quiet, but my uncle took silence to a whole other level. Days would pass where I never heard him speak at all.
He did, however, play the guitar. Where he learned, I have no idea, but he was decent on the instrument and had a craggy resonant voice that drew a listener in. He favored songs by Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson—country folksy, he called it—and once or twice a week, after dinner, he’d sit on the porch and play. When I began showing an interest—I guess I was seven or eight at the time—he handed over the guitar and, with heavily calloused hands, he helped me learn the chords. I wasn’t a natural by any means, but he was surprisingly patient. Even at that young age, I realized that I’d found my passion. While Paige had her art, I had music.
I began practicing on my own. I also began singing, mainly the kinds of songs my uncle sang, because they were the only ones I knew. My aunt and uncle bought me an acoustic guitar for Christmas, then an electric guitar the following year, and I practiced on those, too. I taught myself to play songs that I heard on the radio by ear, without ever learning how to read music. By twelve, I’d reached the point where I could hear a song once and mimic it almost perfectly.
As I grew older, my chores at the farm naturally increased, which meant that I was never able to practice as much as I wanted. It wasn’t enough to feed and water the chickens every morning; I had to repair irrigation pipes or spend long hours in the sun, picking worms from tobacco leaves and crushing them with my fingers, which is just as disgusting as it sounds. Well before I hit my teenage years, I’d learned to drive anything with an engine—tractors, backhoes, harvesters, seeders, you name it—and I spent entire weekends doing just that. I also learned to fix or repair anything that was broken, though I eventually began to despise all of it. With chores and music taking almost all my free time, something had to give, and my grades in middle school began dropping. I didn’t care. The only class I really cared about was music, especially as my teacher happened to be an amateur songwriter. She took a special interest in me, and with her help, I wrote my first song, when I was twelve. I was hooked after that and began writing nonstop, improving little by little.
By that point, Paige was working with a local artist who specialized in stained glass. She’d worked at the shop part-time while she was in high school, but by graduation she was already crafting her own Tiffany-inspired lamps. Unlike me, Paige got pretty good grades all along, but she had no desire to go to college. Instead, she worked on building her business and eventually met a guy and fell in love. She left the farm, moved out of state, and got married. I hardly heard from her during those years after she left; even after she had a baby, I only glimpsed her on the rare FaceTime call, looking tired and holding her crying kid. For the first time in my life, it felt as though no one was really watching out for me.